In the summer of 2021, Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi offered the following response when asked about the president's power to unilaterally cancel student loan debt. "The president can't do it—so that's not even a discussion," she said. The president can delay repayment, as happened following the COVID-19 pandemic, she added, but, "it would take an act of Congress, not an executive order, to cancel student loan debt." That would seem to be that.
Yet roughly a year later, President Joe Biden did cancel up to $20,000 worth of student loan debt for most borrowers, and, in direct contradiction to Pelosi's pronouncement, he did it entirely via the executive branch. There was no act of Congress.
