Here's the bigger picture many people don't get on student loan debt when they say, "why should we let student debtors get out of obligations they took on?" Our society allows nearly everybody EXCEPT students debtors to do this. It's called bankruptcy. Trump did it 6 times. (1/8)

It wasn't always this way. Student debtors could freely declare bankruptcy & "cancel their loans" until 1976. Until 1998 they could do it after a 7 year waiting period for federal loans. Until 2005 they could do it for private loans. Boomers got all that plus cheap school. (2/8)

To understand Biden's reluctance to cancel student debt, you need to understand that he is perhaps the legislator most responsible for those changes. In 1978, he fought off an effort to repeal the 5-year waiting period & codified it in bankruptcy law. In 1984, Biden got it (3/8)

extended to vocational schools & non-profit private loans. In 1990, Biden slipped a provision extending the waiting period to 7 years in a crime bill.

In 1997, Clinton's commission on bankruptcy reform recommended repealing it. The report was written by a little-known (4/8)

Harvard Law professor named Elizabeth Warren in her first foray into public policy. Nevertheless, Biden persisted, sheparding legislation in 1998 making federal loans effectively non-dischargeable altogether. He tried to extend that to private student loans in 2000 and (5/8)

2001. Clinton pocket-vetoed the 2000 effort after Hillary read an op-ed from Warren, called her up, & was persuaded against it (it was about more than student loans‐‐a full evisceration of bankruptcy protections for average people). Paul Wellstone led a successful effort to (6/8)

stop Biden's 2001 bill. Biden eventually got it signed by W in 2005.

Biden isn't the only one to blame, but I doubt anyone had a bigger role over all 30 years. Why? His biggest contributors were the banks in his state of Delaware. He wasn't always "kindly Uncle Joe." (7/8)

Bottom line: canceling student debt doesn't give students some unprecedented benefit that nobody else gets. It merely gives them something that everyone else already gets and only students don't, as a result of bad legislation between 1976 and 2005. It fixes what Biden did. (8/8)

Various receipts on Biden and the changes in law.

Oh, and the story of Elizabeth Warren persuading Hillary to get Biden's bankruptcy bill vetoed in 2000 might be my all-time favorite Warren story. The power of this woman. A law professor who got a bill vetoed through the persuasive force of one op-ed & follow-up meeting.