WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden said Friday he’ll give a second go at his student debt relief plan, rooting it in the Higher Education Act, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against his initial plan to forgive up to $20,000 per borrower.
“I believe the court’s decision was a mistake, it was wrong,” Biden said, speaking from the White House. “We need to find a new way and we’re moving as fast as we can.”
The Supreme Court ruled Friday in a 6-3 decision against Biden‘s plan to cancel up to student loan debt for an estimated 40 million Americans. The venture would have forgiven more than $400 billion in student loan debt, making it one of the most expensive executive actions in history.
Biden pointed to the greenlighting of the Paycheck Protection Program under former President Donald Trump, which cost an estimated $760 billion.
“The hypocrisy is stunning,” Biden said. “You can’t help a family making $75,000 a year but you can help a billionaire and have your debt forgiven? My plan would not only have been life changing for millions of Americans, it would have been good for the American economy.”
Biden said Friday he also has directed the U.S. Department of Education to institute a 12-month “on-ramp” period that would grant borrowers struggling to adjust to repayments after the three-year pause forgiveness for missing initial payments.
Biden stressed it is not an extension of the pause as payments will still be due and interest will accrue, but the Department of Education would not report failure to make payments to credit agencies for the first year.
Last summer, Biden announced his plan to cancel $10,000 in student debt for borrowers earning less than $125,000, or married couples earning under $250,000. Pell grant recipients were eligible for up to $20,000 in forgiveness under the proposal.
The Supreme Court ruling Friday places millions of student loan borrowers back at square one as the payments pause instituted at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic comes to a close in October. During the pause, implemented under the Trump administration, borrowers did not have to make payments on their loans nor did the loans accrue interest. source
I really don’t think anything will be done. If it is, it’ll be another plan mentioned in campaign promises.
Sigh. While I can afford my payments and will happily mine off, I know there are many who can’t and pulling the rug out from Americans when businesses and rich constantly get handouts or freebies is so frustrating.
Same, this will over all hurt the economy on the long run.
That’s what Republicans are counting on. That way they can point and say “Look at how bad things are due to the Democrats” and the uninformed or ignorant get in line to vote R. This is another case by an illegitimate and hyper partisan SCOTUS.
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I don’t get what you want to say here. He made his campaign promise to cancel 10k in student debt for everyone. He held his promise and did that, even better, he gave all debtors 2 years of time where they didn’t have to repay anything before cancelling 10k. Republicans overturned him.
That’s not his fault, and he delivered what he promised.
Maybe if voters had given him a solid 60 vote Senate majority, they could have impeached supreme court justices and prevented that.
Or maybe voter shouldn’t have given us Trump and a Republican majority in house and Senate in 2016, then we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.
Yes, voters are definitely part of the problem. Gerrymandering is another part.
Yes, he did try an option and it didn’t work.
What I’m saying is that there is another completely different way to get loan forgiveness. That is through the department of education. They can forgive any loans and he could have/could still go through them for this. A tweak to PSLF could be done to allow for similar conditions he advocated for or he could amend the original conditional and make a smaller dent. He could have also set up a program at the beginning of his term to tackle tuition rising costs.
He rolled out this forgiveness program right before midterms, when there was a lot of talk about a republican flip of house and senate. The point is, he played politics and I expect it to happen again to increase chances for president re-election.
I’m not fully giving him credit and I’m not fully lambasting him either.