 In the beginning of April, Forbes reported that the Biden administration was actively considering cancelling student loan debt of up to $50,000. And after nearly two months of deliberation, predictably the Biden administration has decided that they're not going to do the popular and sensible thing. It's a no. Now as Zach Friedman of Forbes explains, according to the Washington Post, President Joe Biden will not include any student loan cancellation in his annual budget. Which is expected at the end of next week, only contains major policy plans that have already been released by the Biden administration. It's another major policy setback for student loan cancellation. As a presidential candidate, Biden called for Congress to cancel up to $10,000 of student loans for student loan borrowers, but hasn't enacted any policy for student loan cancellation through an executive order. And that's his issue. So it seems as if he doesn't want to cancel student loan debt via executive order, if he's going to cancel anything, he wants it to be done legislatively, but yet he also isn't really fighting to get rid of the filibuster. And even if that were the case, he doesn't want to cancel more than $10,000. So yeah, this is a bad idea. In 2022, what Democrats need is one surefire thing that they could point to and brag about to get young people motivated to come out. They can say, look, we canceled $10,000, $25,000, $50,000 worth of student debt. And if you want more relief, come out and vote for us and we'll do something else. We'll do X, Y, Z, but they're not choosing to do that. And people are rightfully speculating whether or not they even want to win. As Nathan J. Robinson of Current Affairs points out, it's insanity. One for the, my God, they must be trying to lose file. Think how easy it is to make the case for voting Democrat to a young person who has $10,000 less debt because of you and how much harder it is to make the case to a young person who expected that and was lied to. And that's exactly it. If you run on the most progressive policy platform ever, you have to deliver on at least some promises, but it's been a couple of months into Biden's administration and he's already walked back key promises. The public option. Have you heard about the public option? No. When it comes to deportations, even though initially he tried to halt deportations for the first 100 days after a court blocked that, well, he ended up going on to be as terrible as Obama when it comes to the issue of deportations. And on Israel-Palestine, also predictably terrible. So the thing is Biden has to put up, otherwise in 2022, Democrats aren't going to fare too well because they need turnout to be high. They need to not to be higher than usual, considering all of the voter suppression efforts taking place in Republican controlled states across the country. So you need more people than ever to come out. And Joe Biden isn't giving people that much of a reason. Yes, he's done some positive things. The COVID relief package, the $1,400 stimulus that was supposed to be $3,000, that was helpful. Even if he did go back on that promise, his handling of COVID-19, his rollout of vaccinations has been good. But really what you want to do is motivate young people to get out and vote with the Democrats always fail to mobilize. And the easiest thing you can do is just cancel at least $10,000 of sit-in debt via executive order. He should be canceling a $50,000 worth, but even just $10,000. I mean, that's objectively good for young people, right? You can't deny it. It's less than it should be. It's less than Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and any other presidential candidate, but it's undeniably a good thing, even if it is just an incremental step. But he won't even do that because he wants to have it take place legislatively. OK, well, if you are still trying to work with Republicans on every single thing and you're unwilling to take executive action, then don't complain when you lose ground in 2022. Because this is what's going to happen if you refuse to actually be bold and meet the moment.