Biden canceling another $7.4B in student loan debt

Almost 26,000 Texans will receive $612 million in student loan debt relief through a new round of forgiveness programs announced by the Biden-harris administration.

The relief — extending to 277,000 Americans for a total of $7.4 billion — is the latest in a piecemeal effort taken since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a broader plan last summer. All combined, 1 out of every 10 federal student loan borrowers are now approved for some kind of relief, according to the administration.

“Today’s announcement shows — once again — that the Biden-harris Administration is not letting up its efforts to give hardworking Americans some breathing room,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a news release. “As long as there are people with overwhelming student loan debt competing with basic needs such as food and healthcare, we will remain relentless in our pursuit to bring relief to millions across the country.”

Forgiveness will apply to three subsets of borrowers under the newest efforts. The first category contains people who signed up for Biden’s plan called Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, and have made more than 10 years of payments for smaller original loan amounts. The second comes from administrative adjustments to income-driven repayment plans, and the third comes from fixes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.

Borrowers will get an email informing them of approvals, and relief will be processed in the following weeks, according to the Biden-harris administration.

The relief through SAVE amounts to $3.6 billion in canceled debt, for 206,800 borrowers who have made more than 10 years of payments on loans originally totaling $12,000 or less. Each additional $1,000 in borrowing adds 12 more months until forgiveness, and all borrowers on SAVE receive forgiveness after 20 years for undergraduate borrowers or 25 years for graduate school borrowers, according to the administration.

An estimated 20,540 of those borrowers are from Texas, qualifying for more than $340 million in combined relief.

The administrative adjustments to income-driven repayment plans will bring $3.5 million in forgiveness for 65,800 borrowers. Of those, an estimated 5,260 are from Texas, receiving a total of almost $272 million.

The fixes to Public Service Loan Forgiveness programs will bring $300 million in relief to 4,600 borrowers nationwide.

Biden’s announcement comes on the heels of a new proposal earlier last week that could bring the number of borrowers eligible for relief to over 30 million. To date, 4.3 million Americans have been approved for $153 billion in forgiveness through a series of relief plans.