Governments at all levels have begun to experiment with various forms of debt relief, first during the covid-19 pandemic and now in a bid to mobilize Democratic voters. The recent Supreme Court decisions overturning Biden’s student loan forgiveness and rejecting the CDC’s eviction moratorium may suggest that these forays into debt relief were new and perhaps even impermissible, but this form of politics was a regular feature of American life from the Founding through the Great Depression. We will discuss what lessons we can draw from past periods of debtor mobilization, to help us understand when debtors are likely to succeed in shaping the law and understand how new demands for debt relief are impacting politics today.