President Joe Biden’s blunt proclamation this week that he won’t seek to cancel $50,000 in student loan debt has stoked some frustration within his own party.

During Tuesday night’s CNN town hall in Milwaukee, a woman asked Biden what he would do to wipe out at least $50,000 per person in student loans.

“I will not make that happen,” Biden said.

The president explained that he’s concerned about giving a financial break to Ivy League graduates when that money could be better spent on providing early education to disadvantaged children.

Biden said he supports $10,000 in loan forgiveness, free community college for all and free tuition to public universities for students whose families earn less than $125,000 a year.

On Wednesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki clarified that Biden “doesn’t favor $50,000 of student loan relief without limitation.” She said the president believes any loan forgiveness above $10,000 should be targeted “based on the borrower’s income, based on the kind of debt in question, public schools versus private schools, graduate schools versus undergraduate — obviously there’s a lot of considerations at play.”

Psaki said Biden will ask his Justice Department to conduct a legal review of his authority to act on student debt forgiveness by executive action. His pick for attorney general, Merrick Garland, has not yet been confirmed by the Senate. 

But in a joint statement Wednesday, Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, both Democrats, said they believe it’s clear Biden has the power to cancel up to $50,000 in student debt through an executive order and called on him to do so.

"Presidents Obama and Trump used their executive authority to cancel student loan debt,” the senators said. “The Biden administration has said it is reviewing options for cancelling up to $50,000 in student debt by executive action, and we are confident they will agree with the standards Obama and Trump used as well as leading legal experts who have concluded that the administration has broad authority to immediately deliver much-needed relief to millions of Americans.”

Schumer and Warren said an “ocean of student loan debt is holding back 43 million borrowers and disproportionately weighing down Black and Brown Americans.” Canceling the debt would help close the racial wealth gap and stimulate the economy, they argued.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on Wednesday expressed her frustration with Biden’s comments.  

“1. Who cares what school someone went to?” she tweeted. “Entire generations of working class kids were encouraged to go into more debt under the guise of elitism. This is wrong.

“2. Nowhere does it say we must trade-off early childhood education for student loan forgiveness. We can have both.”

Ocasio-Cortez said many people won’t even feel $10,000 in debt forgiveness until Biden is out of office and urged Democrats to “go big.”

“The case against student loan forgiveness is looking shakier by the day,” she wrote.

“We’ve got the *Senate Majority Leader* on board to forgive $50k. Biden’s holding back, but many of the arguments against it just don’t hold water on close inspection.”