'We will not stop': Biden officials lay out new $39 billion student debt relief program

14 July 2023

When the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its 6-3 ruling in Biden v. Nebraska in late June, President Joe Biden vowed to keep fighting. And on Friday, July 14, the Biden Administration laid out its Plan B for student loan debt.

In Biden v. Nebraska, Republicans argued that Biden's $400 billion student loan debt forgiveness program was unconstitutional. All six of the High Court's Republican-appointed justices agreed, striking the program down. The three dissenting justices were all Democratic appointees: Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Although the Court struck down Biden's broader plan, his administration laid out a new one on July 14. Ryan Teague Beckwith and Janet Lorin of Bloomberg News report that the U.S. Department of Education "will forgive $39 billion in student debt by updating a technical requirement under a long-existing program."

The Bloomberg journalists explain, "The change, announced Friday, will help more than 804,000 borrowers.… The new plan counts more payments toward a forgiveness program that kicks in when struggling borrowers have made the equivalent of either 20 or 25 years worth of payments."

Beckwith and Lorin add that "income-driven plans allow struggling borrowers to make smaller payments and are different from President Joe Biden's broader attempts to alleviate student debt."

In an official statement, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said, "For far too long, borrowers fell through the cracks of a broken system that failed to keep accurate track of their progress towards forgiveness."

Vice President Kamala Harris issued her own statement, saying, "We will not stop there. Our administration will continue to fight to make sure Americans can access high-quality postsecondary education without taking on the burden of unmanageable student loan debt."

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