White House announces another $7.4B in student debt relief
About 277,000 student borrowers will benefit from the relief.
The White House announced Friday it was wiping out another $7.4 billion in student loan debt for thousands of borrowers.
Roughly 277,000 student borrowers will benefit from the latest round of relief. A large chunk of the forgiveness — about $3.6 billion for 206,800 people — is for borrowers enrolled in the Biden administration’s new income-driven repayment plan known as SAVE.
Additionally, the department has waived $3.5 billion for 65,700 borrowers through administrative adjustments to IDR payments, and $300 million for 4,600 borrowers through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.
“Today we are helping 277,000 borrowers who have been making payments on their student loans for at least a decade,” Education Undersecretary James Kvaal said in a statement. “They have paid what they can afford, and they have earned loan forgiveness for the balance of their loan.”
The announcement comes as President Joe Biden and top administration officials have been touting his student loan debt relief efforts on the campaign trail. His administration has canceled about $153 billion for 4.3 million borrowers. And to make good on his 2020 campaign promises, Biden is still working on a more sweeping program to cancel student debt to replace his original $400 billion plan that was struck down by the Supreme Court last summer.
Earlier this week, Biden traveled to Madison, Wisconsin, to pitch new details about his latest student debt relief attempt. The White House also dispatched Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Douglas Emhoff to other swing states.
About 30 million people could benefit from the plan. It aims to forgive unpaid interest for borrowers who now owe more on their loans than they originally borrowed and wipe out debt for other borrowers who would have qualified for existing federal programs but failed to enroll. Some borrowers who attended “low-value programs” would also see relief, and the administration is also pursuing efforts to provide relief to “millions” of borrowers experiencing financial hardship.
“From day one of my Administration, I promised to fight to ensure higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity,” Biden said in a statement about the new relief. “I will never stop working to cancel student debt — no matter how many times Republican elected officials try to stop us.”
The Education Department previously said it planned to formally propose its new “Plan B” for student debt relief in May. A senior administration official told reporters on a call Thursday evening that “there’ll be multiple rules and they are coming in upcoming weeks and months, and I think you will see in those rules estimates on people who are benefiting and around the costs associated with those rules.”