President Joe Biden announced he would be forgiving almost $5 billion for thousands of students who had taken out student loans.
“Today, my Administration approved debt cancellation for another 74,000 student loan borrowers across the country, bringing the total number of people who have gotten their debt canceled under my Administration to over 3.7 million Americans through various actions,” Biden said in a press release issued on Friday.
Today, my administration approved debt cancellation for another 74,000 student loan borrowers.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 19, 2024
This brings the total number of people who have gotten their debt canceled under my administration to over 3.7 million Americans. pic.twitter.com/M7tsd73rYd
In his press release, Biden explained out of the 74,000 people who had taken out student loans, “nearly 44,000 of them” were in professions such as teaching, nursing, firefighting or other industries where they had “earned forgiveness after 10 years of public service.”
“Close to 30,000 of them are people who have been in repayment for at least 20 years but never got the relief they earned through income-driven repayment plans,” Biden added. “My Administration is able to deliver relief to these borrowers – and millions more – because of fixes we made to broken student loan programs that were preventing borrowers from getting relief they were entitled to under the law.”
The Biden Administration previously announced in July 2023, that it would be forgiving $39 billion in student debt for more than 800,000 people.
This came a month after the Supreme Court struck down Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan in a vote 6-3, ruling that the Biden administration was not authorized to forgive part or all of student loan debt for millions of Americans across the nation by using the 2003 HEROES Act. A year prior, the Biden administration had said it planned to cancel $400 billion in student loans.
Biden labeled the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down student debt forgiveness as “wrong” in a statement at the time and vowed to “stop at nothing” to find other ways to provide relief to student loan borrowers.
“From Day One of my administration, I vowed to improve the student loan system so that a higher education provides Americans with opportunity and prosperity – not unmanageable burdens of student loan debt,” Biden added in his press release. “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.”
