President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris visited Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, respectively, on Monday to tout billions of dollars in benefits to tens of millions of people who took out loans to attend college. The move drew pushback from Republicans in Congress who said it could harm U.S. taxpayers. Over $5 trillion.
White House announced The new student loan plan would cancel the debt of 4 million borrowers, provide $5,000 in debt forgiveness to more than 10 million borrowers, and cut unpaid interest for an additional 23 million borrowers.
“Thanks to our uncompromising commitment to providing relief to as many borrowers as quickly as possible, our regulatory efforts will help tens of millions more borrowers find financial relief. and will help repair our country’s broken higher education system,” said Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. said in a statement.
The White House added that the Department of Education helped cancel $146 billion in student loans for 4 million people through executive action.
Biden, 81, will travel to Madison, Wisconsin, to deliver a re-election speech about his administration’s efforts to “lower costs for the American people,” while Harris, 59, will visit Philadelphia and meet Staff Sgt. Mr. Emhoff plans to visit Phoenix.
Mr. Cardona also traveled to New York City for an event with student borrowers who are benefiting from the Biden administration’s debt relief programs, including income-based repayment plans and the Savings for Worthy Education (SAVE) plan.
Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, called the White House’s student loan relief an election-year “ploy.”
“These loan facilities do not forgive debt; they transfer debt from those who willingly took it on in 87 years.[%] “The percentage of Americans who decide not to go to college or who are already working to pay off their loans,” Cassidy said in a statement.
“This is an unfair pre-election ploy to buy votes and does nothing to solve the high cost of education that is pushing young people back into debt.”
Cassidy cited a Penn Wharton budget modeling report from last year that estimated the cost to taxpayers could reach up to $559 billion over the next 10 years, and revamped student loan forgiveness. They have been harshly critical of the Biden administration over the plan, nearly four times as many as white people on the top line. house diagram.
“Let’s try again,” House Education and Labor Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-North Carolina) said in a statement. “President Biden continues to break the law in his quest to make college ‘free.’ The problem is that the so-called solutions to the student loan system outlined in the president’s plan will cost taxpayers, many of whom Mr. President, this is not monopoly money. Students, families, and taxpayers are paying for loans that others voluntarily took out and benefited from. We deserve real solutions to lower costs and fix our federal student loan program.”
Under the government’s income-based repayment program, the majority of student borrowers with a bachelor’s degree will not have to repay the principal on their loans. report From the Urban Research Institute shown last year.
Cassidy also said the focus on student loan forgiveness would overshadow the “failed” rollout of the most recent Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), leaving 18 million applicants in a “critical financial position” for colleges. He pointed out that it has become difficult to find information. It’s fast.
“The Department of Education’s administration of the FAFSA is in shambles due to repeated failures by the administration,” Cassidy added.
“The reason students don’t know which schools they’ll be able to get into this year is because the Biden Department of Education is spending its time concocting a student loan system instead of correcting the mistakes it’s already made on the FAFSA.” is.”
At least $39 billion was forgiven through income-driven repayment plans, $9 billion through programs for public servants and people with disabilities, and $5 billion through existing federal loan programs.
Some of those plans have already been accomplished legal challenge From Republican-led states. A new cancellation push will likely run into similar opposition and will likely take months to be finalized, with many of the proposed relief measures postponed until later this year.
In June 2023, the Supreme Court will seek to forgive $430 billion in student loans for 43 million borrowers under a 2003 law aimed at providing economic relief to veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The Biden administration’s attempt to do so was rejected.
The plan would have provided up to $20,000 in relief for each student borrower eligible for debt forgiveness due to the economic strain caused by the national emergency caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the administration argued.
Since then, the Education Department has put forward a proposal to fulfill Biden’s 2020 campaign promise to forgive student loans and cancel loans held by the federal government through another law, the Higher Education Act of 1965.
Under the new proposal, up to $20,000 of interest would be waived for students with loan amounts greater than the amount borrowed, and nearly all of the interest would be waived for individuals with incomes of less than $120,000 and households with incomes of less than $240,000. will be done.
Student loans will also be unilaterally canceled for 2 million borrowers who have not yet applied for loan relief, undergraduate students who have been repaying their loans for more than 20 years, and graduate students who began repaying their loans 25 years ago. .
A shocking Wall Street Journal poll released last week showed the president trailing former President Donald Trump in Arizona and Pennsylvania, as well as Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada. It has been found.
The poll also found that Biden and Trump were tied in the head-to-head race in Wisconsin.
