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.
I also like to brag about giving less than ten percent of what I promised.
What more can he do without Congress? He tried to act unilaterally through executive action and it didn’t work. He told the house and the senate, back when there was a (slim) Dem majority in both that he needed them to act and Schumer, AOC, and others kept publicly insisting he had the authority to act through executive action.
So blame the folks who failed to act when they might have had a chance to get it through Congress.
Schumer, AOC, and others kept publicly insisting he had the authority to act through executive action.
This looks like you’re blaming Schumer and AOC for suggesting that Biden use an executive order instead of the centrists that made sure that student loan forgiveness never saw a vote.
Schumer is the senate majority leader, he is the person who can bring things to a vote in the Senate. AOC should have focused her lobbying on the chamber of Congress she is a member of to bring a vote on a bill. Or even draft a bill for committee. Not just exhort the president to a course of action that was unlikely to proceed. I’m sure they did it either because they knew they didn’t have the votes, or to protect Dems in vulnerable seats. Either way, they shouldn’t have pushed their portion of the governments responsibility to the executive.
It’s 127 billion dollars more than any other president/administration has ever done.
3.6 million Americans and their families have had a significant burden removed, and that doesn’t even count the new repayment rules that limit the impact student loans borrowers.
He’s still moved the needle on a major pain point for millions of Americans. It warrants credit where it’s due. If you only criticism is that it wasn’t more, then write your representatives and vote accordingly.
I have. Sadly I’m in a deeply red area and my reps have made it clear that I can go fuck off.
Well then you should sympathize with having a conservative roadblock to democratic action.
He’s cancelled student debt for a precious few, unilaterally, several times.
I’m not sure why we’re pretending he needs Congress or SCOTUS, except that a lot of people just want to pretend he’s magically powerless to fulfill his campaign promises.
He’s not pretending, you moron. He already tried forgiving student loan debt through executive orders and the courts blocked him.
He doesn’t need the courts.
He’s unilaterally done this multiple times.
Please stop lying to yourself.
Learn how the government works before you make a fool of yourself again, you ignorant child.
The executive doesn’t have limitless power, regardless of what various bell-ends on Lemmy seem to believe. And if you think that it should, I’d caution you to do a brief thought experiment and imagine what things will be like when someone with whom you disagree occupies the same office.
The cancellations have come through existing federal student loan forgiveness programs
So…is Biden “doing” anything? If it’s just the same programs…I don’t see why we would be saying “Biden is continuing to cancel debt” at all, really. The question is if the admin is using executive orders to make forgiveness easier or something.
Well, that’s because you don’t know enough about this to have an opinion. The Biden administration has streamlined and made automatic processes that used to have to be manually done by the borrower, many of whom did not even know they were eligible for. One of the administration steps was to identify from existing records all of the borrowers who qualify for these programs but were apparently unaware of it.
This article helped to explain what Biden is doing to forgive student loans.
What kills me is that these rocket surgeons are blaming Biden for these forgiveness programs when the public service loan forgiveness plan was enacted almost 20 years ago by George Bush…
Either they’re that history blind or they’re desperate morons, praying the rest of the uneducated masses will just blindly go along with whatever they claim is true… Probably both… Who am I kidding!? Of course it’s both!
This should have been a fact checking article. Instead it’s just perpetuating the narrative that Biden is doing something wrong.
Yes but the PSLF had an abysmal approval percentage up until Biden. The department of education did everything to deny, deny deny.
And the loan agencies certainly don’t want you to know about it either! Mine played dumb until I cited the section about my job, then suddenly it was “Oh that, right! We’ll get you set right up!”
My last payment is next year and I just can’t wait to see what they’ve fucked up because of covid…
Brandon gets my vote.
