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One day after Democrats fumed about his absence on the world stage and from his own administration, retiring President Biden has announced he will roll out even “more student debt cancellation,” work to “achieve a cease[-]fire in Gaza with the hostages released” and send further military assistance to Ukraine, according to an internal White House memo.
The memo from Biden’s chief of staff Jeff Zients, which was addressed to all White House staff, outlined the 46th president’s foreign and domestic priorities for his remaining 42 day “sprint” before President-elect Donald Trump assumes office, a copy of the memo obtained by The Post shows.
In addition to addressing foreign conflicts that erupted on his watch, the 82-year-old commander-in-chief is touting his $2,000 prescription drug cap for some Medicare beneficiaries as well as “more student debt cancellation for public service workers and other borrowers,” purportedly to lower costs for Americans.
Biden has already wiped away more than $175 billion in loans for millions of student borrowers, as part of a 2020 campaign promise to eliminate their debt.
While some of it was blocked by federal courts, Jason Furman, the former chair of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, lambasted the mass debt cancellation for “pouring roughly half trillion dollars of gasoline on the inflationary fire” that hit a 40-year high in 2022.
The following year, the US Supreme Court struck down an unconstitutional move by Biden’s Education Department to make use of a 2003 law meant for veterans of the Iraq war to eliminate $430 billion in student loans.
The president then pivoted in late 2023 and into 2024 to using the Higher Education Act of 1965 and other federal rulemaking to have the department erase more than half-a-billion dollars in debt for other borrowers, including those who have been struggling to pay off their loans for more than 10 years and federal employees.
Nearly all of those have since been halted by lower-court rulings — but the Biden administration could still forgive another $100 billion in loan repayments for individuals it believes have an 80% chance of defaulting by using a “predictive assessment using existing borrower data.”
In total, the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projected that the incoming Trump administration could save up to $550 billion by reversing Biden’s various student debt forgiveness schemes.
On foreign policy, Zients said Biden remains “engaged” in talks to release Israeli and American hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip — who have been held in captivity for more than a year since the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre.
“The President is currently engaged in another push with Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, Israel, and others to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza with the hostages released,” reads the memo — despite reports showing Trump’s transition team has added “fresh momentum” in the negotiations and already sent envoys to Israel and Qatar.
Biden’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas alienated some left-wing members of the Democratic coalition, who voted against their party’s nominee during their primary earlier this year and smeared him as “Genocide Joe” for refusing to stop sending munitions or agreeing to divest from the Jewish state.
On Ukraine, Zients added that Biden will “do more” to get the country “in the best position possible” — and that he will deliver “additional artillery rounds, air defense, and other critical capabilities.”
But with the fall of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime last weekend, Trump has indicated that Russia’s position is weakening and President Vladimir Putin may be prepared to negotiate a peace with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Other parts of the memo spoke about plans to issue more “high-speed internet funds to states,” pushing Senate Democrats to ram through his judicial nominees, and working with Congress to avoid government shut down before the year’s end.
The Zients memo concluded: “And there’s so much more we’re working on,” the Zients memo concluded. “we have announcements to come on everything from climate to conservation to AI and more.”
