Biden Administration Cancels $7.4 Billion More in Student Loans

Politics|$7.4 Billion More in Student Loans Are Canceled, Biden Administration Says https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/us/politics/student-loan-forgiveness-biden.html U.S. World Business Arts Lifestyle Opinion Audio Games Cooking Wirecutter The Athletic You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. The announcement is the latest in […]

Biden Administration Cancels $7.4 Billion More in Student Loans

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Politics|$7.4 Billion More in Student Loans Are Canceled, Biden Administration Says

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/us/politics/student-loan-forgiveness-biden.html

You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.

The announcement is the latest in a piecemeal approach the White House is using to target more specific subsets of borrowers.

President Biden, in a dark blue suit, with a striped shirt and a dark tie, gestures to the crowd with both hands during a speech. In the background, a group of people sit beneath a large American flag hanging on a dark blue backdrop.
President Biden speaking about student debt in Madison, Wis., last week.Credit…Tom Brenner for The New York Times

Zach Montague

The Biden administration announced an additional $7.4 billion in student loan cancellations for some 277,000 borrowers on Friday, building on plans announced earlier this week to provide debt relief for millions of borrowers by the fall if new rules the White House has put forward hold.

The latest round of relief reflects a strategy the White House has embraced by taking smaller, targeted actions for subsets of borrowers that it hopes will add up to a significant result, after a larger plan to wipe out more than $400 billion in debt was struck down by the Supreme Court last year.

It also comes as President Biden aims to shore up support with young voters who may be disproportionately affected by soaring education costs, but who may be drifting away over his policy on Israel and the war in Gaza.

Taken together with previous actions, the announcement on Friday brought the total to $153 billion in debt forgiven, touching around 4.3 million borrowers so far, the administration said. The administration hopes to forgive some or all loans held by some 30 million borrowers total. The administration said the 277,000 people it identified would be notified by email on Friday.

“We’ve approved help for roughly one out of 10 of the 43 million Americans who have federal student loans,” Miguel A. Cardona, the education secretary, told reporters ahead of the announcement.

The new round of cancellations involves three categories of borrowers who qualified under existing programs, with the bulk of the forgiveness going to around 207,000 people who borrowed relatively small amounts — $12,000 or less — and were enrolled in the administration’s income-driven repayment plan, known as SAVE.


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