How Biden is continuing to cancel student loan debt despite Supreme Court ruling | CNN Politics
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Although the Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s signature student loan forgiveness program in late June, his administration has found ways to cancel more than $48 billion in debt since then.

Although the Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s signature student loan forgiveness program in late June, his administration has found ways to cancel more than $48 billion in debt since then.

The cancellations have come through existing federal student loan forgiveness programs, which are limited to specific categories of borrowers, such as public-sector workers, people defrauded by for-profit colleges, and borrowers who have paid for at least 20 years.

These programs are separate from the rejected forgiveness plan, which would have canceled about $430 billion of the $1.6 trillion of outstanding federal student loan debt all at one time.

The Biden administration has been granting student loan forgiveness through these existing programs on a rolling basis since coming into office and has discharged a total of $127 billion for nearly 3.6 million people to date.

  • Makeitstop@lemmy.world
    141·
    1 year ago

    OK, arguments I can think of, which I could see being made with sincerity, and that could support the assertion that this is harming borrowers.

    • By continuing to promote the idea of student loan forgiveness, Biden is giving false hope to millions of borrowers who are waiting for their loans to go away when they should be focusing on paying them off as quickly as they can, or refinancing them to make them more manageable.
    • Student loan forgiveness doesn’t help future borrowers, who will be getting just as much debt.
    • Forgiving student loans and setting an expectation that loans will be forgiven takes away what little pressure exists on colleges to keep tuition down.
    • It costs money, which will contribute to the national debt and that hurts all of us, including borrowers.

    .

    That’s the best I can come up with. And obviously none of that compares to the harm of being economically crippled by student loans, and the relief that forgiveness would mean for borrowers.

    And of course, absent from all this is any kind of alternative plan to address the issue. I can understand not wanting to forgive loans without also reforming the system to prevent this situation from happening again. But instead, all they’ve offered is a cap on how much students can borrow, and a bill that would force repayment plans to be on worse terms than the plan the Biden administration had already announced it was implementing.

    The only GOP plan that I can recall that actually seemed like it was intended to help borrowers was Rubio’s proposal to eliminate interest on all student loans. So of course it was dead on arrival.

    • bane_killgrind@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      So these arguments are not great, your first one relies on an assertion that you don’t back up

      they should be focusing on paying them off

      Why should that individual do anything? Is it more optimal? The situation we are in is lots of people can’t afford to do what they “should” do.

      The other thing they don’t address is where this money goes. What benefits do the post secondary institutions reap from higher and higher tuition fees? Is there utility in continuing that access to funds or are caps on profit and spending overnight things that we should consider?