Thank you. This is actually a very sane and rational assessment. I normally don't even like your posts and don't respect you, but this post was worthy of being pointed out in admiration.
I am a huge supporter of education. My wife and I owe our financial success to education. I may even support the idea of free higher level education going forward at state colleges and trade schools but I do not support government forgiving previous student loans. People entered those signed those loan contracts with the promise of paying back the loan. I view student loans no differently then someone who enters an agreement to get a mortgage, car loan or credit card. We have to honor our obligations.
Those contracts were made under authority of and pursuant to the provisions of the Higher Education Act. Now, to make it easy for you and others, if you scroll down to Item 8(A)(1) on page 283 of that behemoth law, you will see that the Department of Education was authorized by congress to establish "a program of partial loan cancellation to reward disadvantaged borrowers for good repayment histories with their lenders." https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-765/pdf/COMPS-765.pdf So, with this in mind, If Biden says okay for borrowers under $125K he can say that is who they consider disadvantaged. Now it gets murkier faster from there with what they are considering. My fear is that whatever he does is going to be challenged in the courts and people will be kept in limbo for years if 1) he does it for all borrowers 2) he does a flat amount for all borrowers. He needs to stay with the income cap, and limit it to borrowers not in default who have a good repayment history, and then say, "I wanted to do more but this is all I could do under current law. Now Congress has to act to do anything else." I say this without meaning to be insulting, but what you (or I) think about this really doesn't matter. The law is there that allows them to do something. What they reportedly are considering appears to be outside of that authority. He is far better off to do nothing than to overreach. I suspect the reason he hasn't announced anything yet is because they are really struggling to find a way to do something and let the cat out of the bag too early. It would be incredibly cruel to do something making people think theirs are forgiven only to have a court issue an injunction against it, and the borrowers be made to make payments on what they may or may not owe until it ends up in the SCOTUS, and then it could bust a hole in the debt ceiling if the government then had to refund all those payments made all those years while the matter was being litigated.
As regards your prediction that debt forgiveness was 'far fetched, and probably vote-buying'? I mean, now that it's happened in America
My feeling is that if you complete a course in high demand there won't be an issue paying it back. Our federal debt is enough already.