Although the Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s signature student loan forgiveness program in late June, his administration has found ways to cancel more than $48 billion in debt since then.
The cancellations have come through existing federal student loan forgiveness programs, which are limited to specific categories of borrowers, such as public-sector workers, people defrauded by for-profit colleges, and borrowers who have paid for at least 20 years.
These programs are separate from the rejected forgiveness plan, which would have canceled about $430 billion of the $1.6 trillion of outstanding federal student loan debt all at one time.
The Biden administration has been granting student loan forgiveness through these existing programs on a rolling basis since coming into office and has discharged a total of $127 billion for nearly 3.6 million people to date.
Yeah the biggest win was the change to repayment plans. If you get on an income based repayment plan and make your payments for 20 years, the rest will be forgiven, and the monthly payment can be $0 if your income is low enough. That sounds like a long time, but it makes it so these are not forever loans anymore, with more obvious financial benefit to students to pursue a degree.
I’m pretty sure you actually have to be paying each month to qualify.
If your payment is $0 based on your income, staying in appropriate contact with your loan servicer and maintaining your IDR paperwork means that those “$0 payments” each month count towards the 120 (PSLF) or 240 (20 year forgiveness) qualifying payments.
They wouldn’t have to be forever loans if they weren’t exempt from bankruptcy, but Joe showed up for Corporate America on that one. People are kind of just ignoring that he put his stamp of approval on screwing over America’s college students.