U.S. President Biden announced a preliminary agreement with Intel on a major CHIPS and Science Act award during a visit to Intel’s Ocotillo campus in Chandler, Arizona, on March 20, 2024.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
The Biden administration announced Thursday that it will forgive $5.8 billion in student debt for 77,700 borrowers through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.
It also said President Joe Biden will start sending emails to another 380,000 public service workers next week informing them of expected debt cancellation within two years.
The U.S. Department of Education has routinely announced waves of loan forgiveness packages, as the Biden administration seeks to use its existing powers to reduce people’s debt since the Supreme Court blocked its massive $400 billion loan forgiveness package last June. The Biden administration has so far paid off the education debt of nearly 4 million people, totaling $143.6 billion in relief.
“For too long, our nation’s teachers, nurses, social workers, firefighters and other public servants have faced logistics when trying to obtain the debt relief required by law,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. Problems and pitfalls.” in a statement about the latest round of forgiveness.
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The PSLF program, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2007, allows certain nonprofits and government employees to have their federal student loans canceled after 10 years of on-time payments. In 2013, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimated that one in four U.S. workers may be eligible.
However, the program has long been plagued with problems, leaving only a handful of people who actually receive relief. Borrowers complained about confusing rules and erroneous information from their servicers.
The Biden administration has been working to address these issues.
Before Biden’s fixes to PSLF, only about 7,000 borrowers had received debt relief through the 15-year-old program, according to the government. It said 871,000 borrowers have had their debt canceled under the program since 2021.
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