- The administration has said it's assessing
Biden 's legal authority to broadly cancelstudent debt . - Documents obtained by the Debt Collective show that a memo on this has existed since at least April.
Americans first heard that the
But newly released documents show that such a memo existed days after Klain announced the review.
The New Yorker first reported on Friday that the Debt Collective, the nation's first debtors' union, obtained documents and internal Education Department emails via a Freedom of Information Act request. They showed that a first draft of the memo, titled "The Secretary's Legal Authority for Broad-Based Debt Cancellation," has existed since April 5. The memo appeared to the public as six pages of pink redactions, and the internal emails suggested it was circulated among White House leadership on the same day.
Insider spoke with the Debt Collective about the implications of the secret memo.
The memo could've existed as early as February
An Education Department official wrote on April 3 that following Klain's comments, the department would "likely be preparing an updated version of the memo prepared in February," the same month the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, first said the administration was reviewing debt-cancellation actions.
The documents indicated that on April 8 the word "draft" was removed from the header and the memo assumed a new title that referred to the HEROES Act, the law that both Biden and President Donald Trump used to extend the pandemic pause on student-loan payments.
The Education Department did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment, but a spokesperson told The New Yorker it was "continuing to work" with the White House to review student-debt-cancellation options. A White House official told the publication that "these steps take time."
Braxton Brewington, the press secretary for the Debt Collective, told Insider that though the public did not know the contents of the memo, the fact that it has existed for months but has not been released is a "political decision."
"This is in line with how this administration has been moving politically along with student-debt cancellation, which is dragging their feet in ways that do seem intentional," Brewington said. "I think it's fair to say they've had the memos since April and that the White House saw them and made a political decision to not release it to the public or to not act on it."
-Jen Psaki (@PressSec) February 4, 2021
Pressure on Biden to release the memo has been ramping up
Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota recently led a group of her Democratic colleagues in calling on Education Secretary
"Millions of borrowers across the country are desperately asking for student-debt relief," Omar told Insider. "We know the president can do it with the stroke of a pen."
Cardona has said that conversations about the legality of broad student-debt cancellation are ongoing. "It's a priority for me and for President Biden to make sure that part of the conversation is examining loan forgiveness," Cardona said at The Atlantic's Education Summit on Tuesday. "And those conversations are continuing."
Brewington said that while Biden might be waiting to cancel student debt broadly before the midterm elections next year to help Democrats win, Biden still knows the results of the memo, and "economically and morally, people need relief now."
"The right time to do this was Inauguration Day," Brewington said. "This is incredibly urgent, and even more urgent since payments are slated to be turned on in February, which will be a disaster and will devastate people who are already in economically precarious places right now due to COVID-19."