With less than three weeks before the November election, the Biden-Harris administration is reminding voters how it has delivered a historic amount of student debt relief even as Republicans have challenged several of its efforts in court and balked at the costs.
Another round of forgiveness was announced Thursday, bringing the total amount of student loan cancellation to more than $175 billion for nearly 5 million people since President Joe Biden took office. That’s roughly equal to 11% of all outstanding federal student loan debt.
More than 1 million of these student loan borrowers received debt relief through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which promises loan forgiveness to public-sector workers – like teachers and nurses – after they’ve made 10 years of qualifying payments.
The PSLF program has been in place for more than 15 years but had been riddled with administrative problems.
“For too long, the government failed to live up to its commitments, and only 7,000 people had ever received forgiveness under Public Service Loan Forgiveness before Vice President (Kamala) Harris and I took office,” Biden said in a statement.
“We vowed to fix that,” he added.
Biden’s Department of Education made it easier for borrowers to qualify for PSLF – a stark contrast to former President Donald Trump, who repeatedly proposed ending the program when he was in the White House.
Thursday’s announcement impacts about 60,000 borrowers who are now approved for approximately $4.5 billion in student debt relief under PSLF.
Biden’s signature, one-time student loan forgiveness program was struck down by the Supreme Court last year. It would have canceled up to $20,000 of student debt for many low- and middle-income borrowers. In 2022, 16 million borrowers got an email from the Biden administration that said they qualified for debt relief – but no loan forgiveness was ever granted by the program.
That debt-relief program was estimated to cost more than $400 billion.
Harris was recently asked during an interview on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast what she would say to borrowers who were told their student loans would be forgiven but haven’t received relief.
“We are fighting, and I’m going to continue to fight for student debt relief,” Harris said.
“It’s a barrier to people being able to think, even think about starting a family, buying a home. We need to give people relief,” she added.
More recent student loan relief efforts, including a new repayment plan known as Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) that the Biden administration launched last year, are also tied up in litigation.
The lawsuits were filed by groups of Republican-led states, which argue that the Department of Education does not have the legal authority to implement the costly debt-relief programs.
“And while Republican elected officials do everything in their power to block millions of their own constituents from receiving this much needed economic relief, I will continue our work to lower costs, make higher education more affordable, and relieve the burden of student debt,” Harris said in a statement Thursday.
The student debt relief that Biden has been able to deliver – which is more than under any other president – has come through existing programs that affect specific categories of borrowers. In some instances, the administration has made it easier for borrowers to qualify for the program and streamlined application processing.
The Biden administration has made it easier for about 572,000 permanently disabled borrowers to receive the debt relief to which they are entitled.
It also has granted student loan forgiveness to more than 1.6 million borrowers who were defrauded by their college. A backlog of these debt-relief claims built up during the Trump administration, which made efforts to limit the program. Those efforts were ultimately unsuccessful.
The Biden administration made several changes to the PSLF program. Previously, many borrowers argued they believed they qualified but eventually found out – after making years of payments – that they were in the wrong kind of repayment plan or had the wrong type of loan.
“People lost faith. They called PSLF a cruel joke, a broken promise and a nightmare. This is how folks described the program to me when I became secretary,” said Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on a call with reporters.
The Biden administration is conducting a one-time recount of borrowers’ past payments and making adjustments if they had been counted incorrectly, bringing many people closer to debt relief. It also has made changes to PSLF that allow borrowers to receive credit toward forgiveness on payments that are made late, in installments or in a lump sum.
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