The Supreme Court blocked President Joe Biden’s plan to eliminate millions of Americans’ student loan debt in 2023. The president rethought his first idea to wipe out some people’s debt and came up with a new one. He has just announced yet another round of pardons.
Fifteen thousand students who are part of the SAVE repayment program will have their student loans forgiven, according to a statement from the White House issued on February 21. Borrowers who have made all of their loan payments on time and who borrowed $12,000 or less are eligible for forgiveness under the SAVE program.
They will be required to pay an additional year’s worth of payments for every $1,000 they borrowed. Forgiveness is now an option for those who have been making their $14,000 loan payments for 12 years or more.
Borrowers were previously required to make payments for twenty or twenty-five years before being eligible for forgiveness, but that changed under the Biden administration.
The most recent round will cancel out a loan balance of $1.2 billion. For 3.9 million individuals, his administration has now forgiven a total of $138 billion.
The president made the case for student loan forgiveness as an economic stimulus at a library event in Culver City, California. He boasted that it had helped a lot of people “get on with their lives” by relieving them of the burden of student loan debt.
To ensure that Biden receives credit in the election year, his administration will begin informing homeowners through email that the president is forgiving their loans. In a correspondence congratulating the borrower, the Department of Education will specify that the forgiveness is due to the POTUS’ SAVE Plan. In his communication, the president expresses his hope that the reprieve will provide some breathing room.
