Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Eli | Email Lauren A debt ceiling default may have been averted, an economic calamity may have been avoided, and President JOE BIDEN may soon be taking what amounts to a victory lap with an Oval Office speech tonight. But not everyone is heading into the weekend belly full of Tatte and high on good vibes. One group in particular is feeling burned by how the week went down: student debt relief advocates. As details of the agreement began to circulate late Saturday night, those advocates said they were surprised to hear it included a provision effectively requiring the Biden administration to start collecting federal student loan payments — which have been paused since 2020 — at the end of the summer. At first, some advocates thought it was a mistake. That’s because they hadn’t received a heads up about it from the White House. Nor had the possibility of its inclusion been raised when a group of debt relief advocates met with senior administration officials just weeks earlier at the White House. But when the text of the agreement was released the next day — confirming that restarting payments was part of the legislation — advocates said they felt like the sacrificial lamb of the whole deal making process. “It was a total surprise. We felt like the biggest bargaining chip of the debt ceiling,” said NATALIA ABRAMS, president of the Student Debt Crisis Center. “The lack of discussion of this is what led to more of a feeling that we were used.” PERSIS YU, deputy executive director and managing counsel at the Student Borrower Protection Center, said that “student loan borrowers got the bad end of this deal.” “Borrowers are in a much more precarious state right now than they were before the debt deal,” she said. White House spokesperson ABDULLAH HASAN disagreed. “No president has fought harder for student debt relief than President Biden. The administration announced in November that the student loan payment pause would end in August — this bipartisan budget agreement makes no changes to that plan,” he said in a statement. “President Biden protected the student debt relief plan in its entirety from congressional Republicans who were threatening to tank our economy unless they could gut the plan. He stopped congressional Republicans from taking away our ability to pause student loan payments in future emergencies,” Hasan said. He also noted that Biden plans to veto the GOP-resolution repealing the administration’s student debt relief plan and that, at the Supreme Court, the administration is defending its plan against “special interests attempting to deny relief to millions of hard-working Americans, most of whom make less than $75,000 a year.” Biden himself has pushed back on criticism that he made too many concessions in the debt ceiling negotiation process. As for what he did give up, Biden has stressed that the reality of a split Congress forced his hand. Neither Democrats nor Republicans, he notes, will get everything they want. “That’s the responsibility of governing,” he said in a speech on Sunday. But that’s little solace for student debt relief groups. They say that Biden gave up one of the administration’s most important tools to protect borrowers if the Supreme Court strikes down the president’s plan to cancel up to $20,000 in federal loans. The court is expected to announce its decision in the coming weeks, and both the president and debt relief advocates have expressed doubt that the administration will be allowed to move forward with the proposal. Should that happen, then extending the payment pause would have been a logical fall back option, advocates argue. Now… that’s gone. “Codifying the end of the payment pause before you know how the Supreme Court will rule on broad-scale relief is reckless and tells student debtors that they’re bargaining chips not worth fighting for,” said BRAXTON BREWINGTON, spokesperson for the Debt Collective. For the White House, it’s a major gamble though one that has some logic to it. The president and his team have flirted with ending the payment pause several times now, only to keep it in place. The debt ceiling deal forces their hand, and places some of the responsibility on the shoulders of Republican leaders. Still, the process of getting there was messy. Some Democrats on Capitol Hill expressed frustration about being kept in the dark during the debt ceiling negotiations. And some student loan relief advocates say it has led them to rethink their relationship with the White House going into Biden’s reelection. “It’s a moment when folks are taking a beat to reassess how we can be most effective going forward,” said an advocate who asked not to be named to protect their relationship with the administration. MESSAGE US — Are you Warner Bros. Discovery Chairman DAVID ZASLAV? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Actually, probably not. Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!
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