Biden retools repayment plan to cancel more student loans

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is canceling student loans for 206,000 more borrowers as part of a new repayment plan that offers a faster route to forgiveness.

The Education Department announced the latest round of cancellations Friday in an update on the progress of its SAVE Plan. Additional people are becoming eligible for student loan cancellation as they hit 10 years of payments, a new finish line for some loans that’s a decade sooner than what borrowers faced in the past.

Casting a shadow over the cancellations, however, are two new lawsuits challenging the plan’s legality.

Two groups of Republican-led states, fronted by Kansas and Missouri, recently filed federal suits arguing that the Biden administration overstepped its authority in creating the repayment option.

“From day one of my administration, I promised to fight to ensure higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “I will never stop working to cancel student debt — no matter how many times Republican elected officials try to stop us.”

With the latest action, the Education Department has approved cancellation for about 360,000 borrowers through the new repayment plan, totaling $4.8 billion.

The SAVE Plan is an updated version of a federal repayment plan that has been offered for decades, but with more generous terms.

Congress created the first income-driven repayment option in the 1990s for people struggling to afford payments on standard plans.

It capped monthly payments to a percentage of their incomes and canceled any unpaid debt after 25 years. Similar plans were added later, offering cancellation in as little as 20 years.

Arguing that today’s borrowers need even more help, the Biden administration merged most of those plans into a single repayment option with more lenient terms.

The SAVE (Saving on a Valuable Education) Plan allows more borrowers to pay nothing until their income rises above certain limits. It also lowers payments more than previous plans, eliminates interest growth and cancels unpaid debt in as little as 10 years.

Biden first announced the plan in 2022.