Can the White House Really Forgive Student Debt?

The White House recently announced a student loan forgiveness program, prompting questions about implementation, economic implications, and whether the program will have an impact on consumer spending. Sarah Wolfe of the U.S. Economics team and Arianna Salvatore of the U.S. Public Policy team discuss.

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Sarah Wolfe: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Sarah Wolfe from Morgan Stanley's U.S. Economics Team. 

Ariana Salvatore: And I'm Ariana Salvatore from Morgan Stanley's U.S. Public Policy Research Team. 

Sarah Wolfe: And on this episode of the podcast, we'll focus on student loans, in particular the recent student loan forgiveness program, and we'll dig into the impact on consumers and the economy. It's Thursday, September 15th, at 12 p.m. in New York. 

Sarah Wolfe: So, Ariana, the White House recently announced plans to forgive individuals up to $20,000 in federal student loans and extend the moratorium on interest payments. However, there was some confusion earlier in the year as both President Biden and Speaker Pelosi expressed doubts about the president's authority to cancel student debt. So is this something that requires an act of Congress, or can the president really do it alone? 

Ariana Salvatore: As you mentioned, prior to the announcement, there was some unresolved questions out there surrounding the legality of canceling student debt. In revealing the program, the administration cited authority from a 2003 law called the 'Heroes Act' that gives the executive the power to reduce or eliminate student debt during a national emergency, “when significant actions with potentially far reaching consequences are often required”. That being said, don't expect it to go over quietly. Reporting indicates that some Republican attorneys general are looking to bring legal challenges to the plan, which could present a risk to execution. But let's put questions about implementation aside for a second. What does reduced student debt impact more, longer term planning or immediate spending? And how do you quantify the impact on consumer spending? 

Sarah Wolfe: Thanks, Ariana. I'd like to just take a step back for a second before I talk about the economic impact, just so we could size up the program a bit. We estimate that there's going to be $330 to $390 billion in debt directly forgiven as part of this program. However, we estimate that the fiscal multiplier is actually quite small. So every dollar of debt that's forgiven that's going to get spent and put back into the economy, is really estimated at only 0.1. This is really small when you consider the fiscal multiplier of the COVID stimulus programs. So for example, the stimulus checks, supplemental unemployment benefits, that had a fiscal multiplier of 0.5 to 0.9. So it was much larger. The reason for this is because our survey work shows that people who have their student debt forgiven don't actually change their immediate spending patterns. Instead, it really impacts longer term planning. We're talking about paying down other debts, planning for retirement, perhaps buying a house or having a child earlier, and so there's not really an immediate spending impact on the economy. What does have a larger fiscal multiplier is forbearance coming to an end. Prior to COVID, people were on average paying $260 a month in student loan payments. That's been on hold for two and a half years. So when that resumes again in January, it's likely going to be less than $260 a month because of the loan forgiveness and other measures passed by the White House to limit loan payments per month. However, that's an immediate impact to discretionary income, and as a result, we're going to see a lot of households adjust their spending in the near term to make these new loan payments. Arianna, speaking of student loan forbearance, which I mentioned is set to end at the end of this year after a number of extensions, the White House is hoping that forgiveness is going to kick in right when forbearance comes to an end. Can we actually count on the timing working out like this? 

Ariana Salvatore: So there's definitely a risk that the program is delayed because of normal implementation hurdles, right. Things like determining eligibility for cancellation among millions of borrowers. The Department of Education memo that was released following the announcement says that 8 million borrowers may be eligible to receive relief automatically because relevant income data is already available. However, the department is also in the process of creating an application so borrowers can apply for forgiveness on their own, but that hasn't gone live yet. The DOE said it would be ready no later than when the pause on federal student loan repayments expires at the end of this year. Unfortunately, there's no real way to know when exactly that will be. 

Sarah Wolfe: So let me just get this clear. The Department of Education only has the information on 8 million student loan borrowers right now. So they're going to need to gather the information for the remaining borrowers up to 43 million in order to start this forgiveness program. 

Ariana Salvatore: Yeah, exactly. And that's why we tend to see large scale government programs like this take a little bit of time to ramp up rollout and have impacts on the economy. So in the event that all of those eligible to take advantage of the forgiveness program actually do so, let's focus in on the macroeconomic impacts. In this high inflation environment, wouldn't student loan forgiveness also have an additional inflationary effect? 

Sarah Wolfe: Definitely at face value, student loan forgiveness is inflationary. However, as I mentioned earlier, because it doesn't impact near-term spending decisions and is more about longer term planning, the inflationary impact, I think, is less than people would think. It's estimated to only add 0.1 to 0.5 percentage points to inflation 12 months following the cancellation. However, the forbearance program, as I mentioned, since that's going to have more of an immediate impact on spending decisions, that's going to have a deflationary impact. And it's estimated that forbearance programs are going to shave 0.2 percentage points off inflation over the 12 months following forbearance starting again. And so if you think about forgiveness being inflationary and forbearance being disinflationary, it's likely that forbearance is going to outweigh some of the inflationary impact, if not all of it, from forgiveness. 

Ariana Salvatore: Okay, so bringing it back to a more micro level. Last question for you here, Sarah. What are the implications for consumer credit and consumer ABS? 

Sarah Wolfe: We think that student loan payments restarting in January pose quite a bit of risk to consumer credit quality. Although we're seeing consumer credit quality today is very healthy and delinquencies are low, we are starting to see delinquencies rise for subprime borrowers in recent months. Also, if we dig into the data and look at how student loan borrowers have been paying down their student loans over the last 2.5 years versus those who haven't been, the credit quality for those who have not been is much worse than those who have been. That leads us to believe that come January, when everybody needs to start paying down their student loans, that in particular these more subprime, lower income borrowers are really going to struggle and it's going to deteriorate credit quality. 

Sarah Wolfe: Well, Ariana, thanks for taking the time to talk. 

Ariana Salvatore: Great speaking with you, Sarah. 

Sarah Wolfe: And thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.