My (who cares) take is that it was much better than expected, much better than the repeatedly leaked means tested $10K, even though $10K across the board was the headline action. I do think people should have had more debt forgiven outright, but they actually did do, in a somewhat roundabout way, what their critics were dishonestly demanding, which was to try to reform the system going forward instead of just doing a jubilee. Capping payment at 5% of income, capping the number of years, limiting years of repayment, and various other things are basically creating a new system of higher ed funding going forward. Fundamentally it's making explicit that the federal government is involved and should stop just providing cash for all the neighborhood loan sharks without any responsible framework in place.
I say critics were dishonestly demanding a broader reform of the system, because "don't do the thing that is possible, instead do the thing that is impossible" is their favorite ploy and they didn't think it was possible! Dark Brandon is more powerful than we thought!
