White House, Used to Road Blocks on Student Debt, Finds Cause for Victory Lap
The New York Times
An effort to revive and maximize use of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program has resulted in student loan forgiveness for over one million people.
The Biden administration has reached a major milestone in its pursuit of expansive student debt relief, announcing on Thursday that over one million people have had their federal student debt canceled through a program that offers forgiveness to public service workers.
For President Biden, whose student debt agenda has been repeatedly handicapped by Republican legal challenges, the announcement marked a modest but undeniable achievement. With just weeks until the election, the administration has reported approving around $175 billion in total student debt relief for nearly five million borrowers through all the actions taken during Mr. Biden’s presidency.
Those numbers reinforce the central conundrum Mr. Biden faces on student debt. He has fallen far short of the sweeping $400 billion in loan cancellation for as many as 45 million borrowers he originally sought. But even as that has left some supporters disillusioned, he has provided far more debt forgiveness through a variety of smaller measures than any previous president.
Public Service Loan Forgiveness, a program established by Congress in 2007 that allows a variety of workers in the public and nonprofit sectors to have their student loans canceled after 10 years of employment, is a bright spot. White House officials said the recent approval of 60,000 more public service workers for debt relief under the program had brought the tally under the administration to over one million people, who collectively had $74 billion forgiven.
“It represents a promise by President Biden and Vice President Harris to fix broken student loan programs that will have an impact, not only on these one million people and their families, but on millions more who are considering going into careers in teaching, nursing or other public service fields in the years to come,” Natalie Quillian, a deputy chief of staff in the White House, told reporters during a call on Wednesday.
Several studies have suggested a relationship between large student loan burdens and an unwillingness among borrowers to work in lower-paying public interest fields such as education, government and the nonprofit sector.
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