In its latest move, the Biden administration announced Wednesday that it’s canceling $1.2 billion in debt for nearly 153,000 people enrolled in Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE. In Ohio, 7,540 borrowers will have a combined $60 million forgiven, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
The move is the latest by President Joe Biden to reduce student loan debt after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down his plan to erase $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients and $10,000 for many other borrowers. Nearly 1.1 million Ohioans applied for forgiveness through that program, which Republicans panned as a taxpayer burden that left out swaths of Americans.
Nearly four million borrowers have had about $138 billion of their federal student loans flagged for cancellation, despite a Supreme Court ruling last June that blocked relief for millions more student-loan holders.
President Joe Biden’s Plan B for broad student debt relief just got one step closer to becoming reality and addresses Republicans complaint that many Americans were left out of the student loan debt forgiveness plan. After hours of talks, a group of former students, advocates and experts greenlit an Education Department proposal that could forgive student loans for a broad range of struggling borrowers. The specific plan approved would ensure automatic relief for borrowers experiencing economic hardship. It would give the U.S. education secretary significant authority in determining who would count under the new regulation. The secretary would be allowed to consider multiple factors in those decisions – including income, age and the likelihood a person would default on their loans. Before this plan is implemented, a public comment period must be held and the Biden Administration is expecting more law suits to stop student loan forgiveness.
In the mean time, the president says he’s pursuing debt cancellation in every venue he can. The decision comes the same week that Biden forgave more than $1 billion in loans for a separate batch of borrowers, drawing the ire of conservatives in Washington who accused him of trying to “buy votes.”
Emails were sent to affected borrowers last week notifying them they would not need to take any further action to receive relief. Education department officials said that people who may have missed the email can log into their accounts on the studentaid.gov website to see if they’ve qualified, or log into the website maintained by their student loan servicing company.