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For years, this has been the animating theory of American student loans. They’re not a shortcut to the middle class or a cheat code, but a high-stakes workaround, a back route, a way to give yourself the bootstraps so you can actually pull yourself up by them. A half-century into this student debt experiment, we need to face a new reality. For millions of Americans, the back route has led them far, far…

For months, borrower advocates have been calling on Congress to include these borrowers as they consider student-loan provisions in the context of coronavirus relief bills. Now, some are urging the Department of Education to use its authority to create a pathway for these borrowers to be included in the payment pause.

When the U.S. government bailed out student loan lenders during the Great Recession, legislators unintentionally set off a series of cascading events that has left more than six million student loan borrowers locked out of a crucial benefit amid the coronavirus pandemic more than 10 years later. Two consumer advocacy groups are pressing the Biden administration to change that.

Nationally, student loan debt is at crisis level. The share of students behind on loan payments equals the share of homeowners in default at the peak of the housing crisis. What’s the best way to help students struggling under a huge debt burden?

Debt cancellation would grow the economy by hundreds of billions of dollars each year, creating the more prosperous future Americans hope to see when the health crisis is over. Biden’s economic recovery plan aims to put people back to work; debt cancellation would add up to 1.5 million jobs per year, as we rebuild industries decimated by the pandemic.