John,

I’m calling on President-elect Biden to cancel up to $50,000 in debt for federal student loan borrowers by executive order.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and my fellow New York Congressmen-elect Jamaal Bowman and Ritchie Torres are standing with me in this fight. Will you join us?

Add your name to my petition to call on Joe Biden to cancel student debt on Day One of his administration.

I know firsthand what it means to be burdened by student debt. Like most Americans, I don’t come from money. I grew up in Section 8 housing and on food stamps, raised by a single mom who still had to work multiple jobs just to put food on the table for us.

I received significant financial aid from my undergraduate institution, which provided me an education my family could never have afforded on their own. Without any debt, I was able to enter public service by doing a fellowship in the Obama Administration’s Department of Justice, an experience that would help me get into a great law school and eventually the United States Congress.

I know that for every story like mine, there are countless stories of hard-working, ambitious students from working-class and middle-class homes who have not had my luck. They weren’t able to go to college for free or get a good-paying job right out of school — if ever. They’re saddled with enormous debt, with no way to pay it off.

For every generation before mine, education has offered young people a ticket to the American Dream. Unfortunately, that dream has not materialized for the youth of today. Wages have been stagnant for decades as the cost of higher education has skyrocketed.

President-elect Biden can give so many Americans a fighting chance by ending this crisis with one stroke of his pen. Please sign my petition to call on him to cancel student debt by executive order.

The student debt crisis also hits our most vulnerable communities the hardest. Student debt disproportionately affects Black and brown people, who tend to lack generational wealth.

Student debt is also disproportionately held by members of the LGBTQ+ community, who are more likely to be disowned by their parents, and therefore lack their financial support.

Most of the people I know who are my age and still living in our district must live at home with their parents or their grandparents because they can’t afford to live independently. With tens of thousands of dollars in student debt, they’re not able to meaningfully participate in our economy through home-ownership — the single greatest generator of wealth in our country — or entrepreneurship. They can’t even afford to start their own families.

Forgiving student debt would liberate millions of Americans to meaningfully participate in our economy, and according to leading economists, would create upwards of one million jobs.

In these unprecedented times, there has never been more urgency to implement real solutions that would not only revive our economy, but — as President-elect Biden pledged to do in his campaign — build it back better than before.

So please, join me in calling on President-elect Biden to cancel student debt immediately upon taking office. This would be transformative not just for the millions of Americans with student loans, but for all of us.

Thank you for standing with me on this important issue. It’s time to fight for real solutions that will help the American people thrive, not just survive.

Onward,
Mondaire

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