In conversations with Biden and top aides like White House chief of staff Ron Klain, Warren's favorite statistics include stressing that only 2% of Harvard students graduate with debt but half do at the University of Delaware -- which just happens to be the President's alma mater and one of the schools he'll be addressing this weekend.

She'll point out that 91% of students at historically Black colleges and universities graduate with loans. She'll point out how many people have student debt who never even finished enough courses to complete their degrees, and the disproportionate racial breakdown that, by her numbers, have just 6% of White borrowers still paying off loans after 20 years, compared to 96% of Black borrowers.

There's a direct political ramification of how many people the forgiveness can touch depending on whether Biden lands at $10,000, $20,000 or higher, Warren stresses. And as for the argument that canceling by executive authority could be challenged in court, she argues that the government is the holder of the contracts, so Republicans or other opponents to the move would have to find someone to say he or she was harmed in order to sue to stop the move.
Jones, Warren and others have repeatedly pointed out to the White House that Biden used his authority to defer payments and no Republicans sued over that.

Warnock -- trying to hold onto his Senate seat in Georgia in the fall -- centered his argument to Biden on who in Georgia would be included in forgiveness, telling the President about all the people who talk to him after Sunday services at his home church in Atlanta.

Inflation looms over the decision

Other leaders on the Hill have been trying to calibrate pressure on the White House. Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley, while not part of the conversation with Biden last week, spent her time whipping support for a letter from the full Congressional Black Caucus timed to the meeting declaring that "the student loan debt crisis is a racial and economic justice issue disproportionately impacting Black communities across the nation."
While the CBC letter didn't include a specific number, Pressley has been clear about what she would consider acceptable, saying that $10,000 per borrower would barely cover interest for some of the most burdened borrowers, and that the approximately $250 billion cumulatively that would cover would be a drop in the bucket compared to the $2 trillion in student debt in America.

Inflation anxiety is circulating among progressives as well.

"He should cancel all of it. The problem is inflation might shoot up because we don't yet have guardrails in place for price gouging," said New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman.
Reflecting some of the wariness among Democratic moderates in his chamber about cancellation, Schumer has not called a show vote on the issue, despite attending the latest White House meeting and repeatedly calling for Biden to make the move.

Biden pressured to act

White House aides have been having trouble lately concealing their own tedium at telling reporters over and over that there's still no decision on the issue.

A White House spokesperson reiterated that Biden's extending the moratorium on payments means that for 41 million borrowers, "no one has been required to pay a single dime of student loans since the President took office," with $18.5 billion in targeted debt relief to more than 750,000 borrowers who meet the requirements of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.

Aides are sensitive to the idea that Biden is seen as having promised to eliminate debt while on the campaign trail, even though his statement then was just that he was in favor of doing so -- not that he'd do it himself. The spokesperson added, "The President continues to support forgiveness of $10,000 through congressional action."

But with the midterms looming and not much faith among Democrats in the White House or beyond for more wins in Congress between now and the fall, operatives are pressing Biden to move where he can.

Data for Progress, a progressive polling firm, has found wide support for cancellation -- but not a significant difference between canceling $10,000 and $50,000 among Democrats. It's not that there are likely many single-issue student debt voters, said the firm's political director, Marcela Mulholland. Instead, it's an issue for enthusiasm.

"It's really clear that we need to be delivering tangible, real wins for our base," Mulholland said. "The way the administration has gone about it so far, of being lukewarm and flip-floppy, has meant that the people who are against forgiveness are upset that student loan payments haven't been resumed, and the people who want student debt (forgiveness) are disappointed he hasn't done it."

For many Democrats outside the progressive wing of the party, that's not the only problem.
"We're on a path to 30% approval if the White House keeps up this pretense that Covid is over at the border but not for people with college debt," said one Democratic strategist involved in multiple midterm campaigns, referring first to the administration trying to push back against ending the Title 42 pandemic restrictions on immigration. "Voters know when Covid is being used as cover for policy wish fulfillment."

For all the insider focus on the process so far, Mulholland argued that Biden still has an opportunity to capitalize on the overwhelming majority of voters who never tune into the Washington back-and-forth.
"What makes it into most voters' consciousness," Mulholland said, "is the decision at the end of the day: 'Do I have to make my student loan payments or not?'"