Borrowers cheer Biden's record-setting student loan forgiveness, but left bitter with the system

[BumRushDaShow]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by Lasher (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: The Hill

01/01/25 6:00 AM ET


Joe Biden will leave office with the legacy of approving the greatest amount of student debt relief of any president, changing the lives of millions of Americans. Many of these borrowers waited for years for the forgiveness while paying down their loans, in some cases sacrificing major life events such as buying a home due to their debt. While grateful to see their loan balance disappear, borrowers who received forgiveness under Biden lament a system they say is holding back millions of others.

“I finally got the loans forgiven in December 2023 and received the zero balance letter. How is it affecting me almost a year later? It really set me back over paying on these loans for years. I never built significant savings at all. I don’t have anything saved. I’m a solo parent, and I do not receive child support,” said Christinia Winton, a mother of two and public servant in Arizona who received loan forgiveness on almost $30,000 through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program.

The Biden administration forgave some $180 billion of student loans in total, taking away the debt entirely for almost 5 million Americans. The relief has largely been split up between those on income-driven repayment plans such as PSLF, the borrower defense program that forgives loans to those cheated by their schools and individuals with disabilities.

One of Biden’s accomplishments in office was fixing some of the problems with PSLF, a program meant to give public service workers such as teachers and police a means to receive student debt relief if they make 120 qualifying payments. Biden made regulatory improvements on the program and gave a one-time count adjustment of payments to help get borrowers on the right track and shorten their repayment time.

Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/education/5061523-biden-student-loan-debt-relief-forgiveness/

[HereForTheParty]

1. Only a small fraction were forgiven

A loved one of mine owes 130k and is a social worker. Didn't get a dime. It's a sore spot. Joe never dived headlong into this fight.

But I do think it's pretty rich that the few who got forgiveness are complaining.

[BumRushDaShow]

2. "Joe never dived headlong into this fight."

One of his first earliest actions on this subject was in 2022 -

FACT SHEET: President Biden Announces Student Loan Relief for Borrowers Who Need It Most

And like a number of his other attempts, it was BLOCKED by the SCOTUS (in 2023) -

Supreme Court strikes down Biden student-loan forgiveness program

By Amy Howe
on Jun 30, 2023 at 12:31 pm


This article was updated on June 30 at 4:00 p.m.

By a vote of 6-3, the justices ruled that the Biden administration overstepped its authority last year when it announced that it would cancel up to $400 billion in student loans. The Biden administration had said that as many as 43 million Americans would have benefitted from the loan forgiveness program; almost half of those borrowers would have had all of their student loans forgiven.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court in Biden v. Nebraska, characterizing the decision as a straightforward interpretation of federal law.

Justice Elena Kagan dissented, in an opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

When the Biden administration announced the program in August 2022, student-loan repayments had already been on hold for over two years. Betsy DeVos, who served as the secretary of education during the Trump administration, suspended both repayments and the accrual of interest on federal student loans at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. She relied on the HEROES Act, a law passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks that gives the secretary of education the power to respond to a national emergency by “waiv[ing] or modify[ing] any statutory or regulatory provision” governing the student-loan programs so that borrowers are not worse off financially because of the emergency.

(snip)

However from 2022 - current, a series of additional student loan forgiveness efforts have been announced to cover different circumstances to go around the SCOTUS ruling.

But even those efforts have had GOP lawsuits and are of course conveniently forgotten or ignored on DU.

[Lasher]

3. Locking.

This is analysis.