Biden admin announces $7.7B student debt handout for 160K borrowers
WASHINGTON — President Biden announced another $7.7 billion in student debt writeoffs Wednesday — continuing a piecemeal attempt to make good on his campaign promises after the Supreme Court struck down a broader giveaway last year.
The latest action will benefit more than 160,000 people and brings Biden’s total estimated debt cancellation to $167 billion for 4.75 million people — in what Republicans decry as an attempt to buy votes ahead of the Nov. 5 election.
“Education should never be a barrier to opportunity. And I will never stop working to cancel debt, despite Republican officials’ attempts to stop us,” Biden said.
“President Biden continues to add to the taxpayer tab in his student loan forgiveness scheme. Again, there is no such thing as ‘canceling’ student loan debt. Someone always has to pay,” Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) wrote on X. “In this case, the 87% of American adults who DO NOT have student loans will be footing the $7,700,000,000 bill.”
The majority of the latest grants — $5.2 billion — are going to nearly 67,000 people under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, which allows people in certain career fields such as public safety, health and education to have their debt forgiven after 10 years of loan repayments.
The PSLF program, which has underpinned $68 billion of Biden’s loan forgiveness spree, was established through legislation signed in 2007 by President George W. Bush, but which did not take effect until 2017. Most early applicants were denied under President Donald Trump.
Another $1.9 billion doled out Wednesday went to more than 39,000 former students enrolled in the Education Department’s Obama-era Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) program.
The initiative, which forgives loans after 10 years for people who pay up to 10% or 15% of their discretionary income, has underpinned $51 billion of Biden’s broader forgiveness initiative, benefitting more than 1 million people.
Wednesday’s announcement also included $613 million for 54,300 people using the SAVE Plan to pay for graduate degrees.
SAVE Plan grants have totaled $5.5 billion under Biden, going to 414,000 borrowers.
Other write-offs have benefitted former students of institutions alleged to have defrauded pupils, including $6.1 billion earlier this month for about 317,000 people who attended the Art Institutes, which allegedly dangled false promises of careers to burgeoning artists in swing states including Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania
Biden has hinted at further loan forgiveness — including a plan that could take effect in early fall to cancel up to $20,000 in accrued interest for more than 25 million debtors who went to college.
The Supreme Court last June struck down a prior attempt by Biden to forgive $10,000 or $20,000 per student in federally owned debt.
Biden announced that effort in August 2022 shortly before that year’s midterm elections, despite prominent Democrats including then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) acknowledging he lacked the authority to unilaterally authorize those payments.
Critics note that after leaving office as vice president, Biden was paid about $1 million to serve as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania from 2017 to 2019 — despite just nine known campus visits.
In 2021, Biden repaid UPenn president Amy Gutmann, who also provided him with a cushy paid-for DC office suite at the foot of Capitol Hill, with a nomination to be US ambassador to Germany.
