The Biden administration is canceling student loans for another 160,000 borrowers through a combination of existing programs.
The Education Department announced the latest round of cancellation on Wednesday, saying it will erase $7.7 billion in federal student loans. With the latest action, the administration said it has canceled $167 billion in student debt for nearly 5 million Americans through several programs.
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The latest relief will go to borrowers in three categories who hit certain milestones that make them eligible for cancellation. It will go to 54,000 borrowers who are enrolled in Biden’s new income-driven repayment plan, along with 39,000 enrolled in earlier income-driven plans, and about 67,000 who are eligible through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.
I think an individual jolt of this magnitude will not necessarily move the needle, but I’ve heard commentary about this just being a regular presidential thing to do going forward, which would be a pretty inadequate and unpredictable way (each time binging on happenstance of election, assuming that at least one of them even wants to do the “tradition”). Might be unfair for me to think overmuch on those suggestions, but they always stick in my head in these conversations. Still find it odd that the executive branch should be able to do this sort of thing unilaterally.
These were all either existing programs or a new program that forgives loans that already weren’t being repaid (via existing IBR rules). This is “unpredictable” only insofar as the previous president refused to let the programs work.
He isn’t. He does have that ability (because Congress specifically gave it to the Executive in the Higher Education Act), but these are existing programs directed by Congress. The new group is just Biden automatically enrolling people who qualify in the old program.
Worry about loan forgiveness to businesses and rich people rather than to poor people and public servants. There’s corn and fuel subsidies costing way more than this that have perverted the economy and actively destroy the environment. People get really worried about the economic effects of poor people getting stuff like that’s coming directly out of their wallet when there’s so much larger and more direct issues that just get assumed as normal.
The end result was a promised program that didn’t work as intended and was unreliable. The details are a little less important than the results. However, I’m actually referring broadly to some folks that I saw saying that it should be some sort of presidential ‘ritual’ of forgiving debt, rather than being confined to select programs.
Note that I’m less concerned about the loan forgiveness, but instead worry about the “blank check” effect and future affordability and whether or not a student gets stuck with debt assuming they will get forgiven and then get screwed because a future administration refrains from doing so or interferes with ‘forgiveness’. I’d rather circumstances result in no significant debt at all, that government’s willingness to contribute happens up front and universities are somewhat held accountable for their costs to keep that affordable. We can also worry about the crap done for businesses and rich people, but the current situation kind of sucks for planning if you are poor, having to go into massive debt hoping maybe you’ll get in on some forgiveness down the line.
Then maybe you should have found a topic about that or referred to it specifically rather than just latching on to whatever debt-forgiveness news came up to air your grievances. It’s kind of obvious you’re not really concerned with whether a program is “unreliable” and just don’t like debt forgiveness, because all of these things exist with any program ever. The executive can sabotage it? That’s fucking everything. These are congressionally-passed laws establishing long running programs, there’s no “righter” way that means a hostile executive can’t sabotage it.