According to the Education Data Initiative, 43.6 million Americans have federal student loan debt. Collectively, Americans owe $1.7 trillion, and hope for relief has been a rollercoaster throughout Joe Biden’s presidency. Thursday, Jan. 11, that rollercoaster hit another peak, as the Department of Education announced that Americans with smaller federal student loans will get relief in February.
I won’t back down from using every tool at our disposal to get student loan borrowers the relief they need to reach their dreams.
President Joe Biden
The Biden administration is fast-tracking the relief as it was originally scheduled for July of 2024. Biden has wiped debt for 3.6 million Americans, but the Supreme Court blocked his administration from canceling student loans for about 40 million more people last year.
“And, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision on our student debt relief plan, we are continuing to pursue an alternative path to deliver student debt relief to as many borrowers as possible as quickly as possible,” Biden said in a statement on Friday, Jan. 12. “I won’t back down from using every tool at our disposal to get student loan borrowers the relief they need to reach their dreams.”
According to the Biden administration, next month, anyone who initially took out $12,000 or less in federal student loans and has been in repayment for 10 years will have their debt canceled immediately. However, there is a catch. To qualify for the relief, debtors must enroll in Biden’s SAVE repayment plan, which links income and payments.
According to Biden, more than 3 million Americans have $0 monthly payments thanks to the SAVE plan, while interest does not pile up.
It is still unclear how many people will benefit from this round of relief, but the Education Department told reporters that it would help low-income student loan borrowers, adding that more than 3 in 5 Americans with defaulted loans originally borrowed less than $12,000.
