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Biden administration cancels $7.7 billion in student debt for 160,500 people. Here’s who qualifies.
The White House on Wednesday said it has approved $7.7 billion of student debt cancellation for 160,500 borrowers, part of its ongoing effort to provide relief after the Supreme Court last year blocked President Joe Biden’s plan for broad-based college loan forgiveness.
With the latest round of forgiveness, the administration has erased a total of $167 billion in student loans for 4.75 million people, or about 1 in 10 student loan borrowers, the Department of Education said.
The people who qualify for forgiveness in the latest round of debt cancellation include public servants such as teachers and law enforcement officers, as well as tens of thousands of people who have signed up for Biden’s new loan repayment program, called SAVE. That program, created last year, pegs a borrower’s monthly payment to their income, lowering their financial payments, and is designed to fix a pitfall of earlier repayment programs that allowed interest to snowball.
“One out of every 10 federal student loan borrowers approved for debt relief means one out of every 10 borrowers now has financial breathing room and a burden lifted,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in the statement.
Here’s what to know about the latest round of forgiveness.
Who qualifies for loan forgiveness?
The Biden administration said there are three groups of borrowers who have been approved for forgiveness in the latest round.
- 66,900 borrowers will have $5.2 billion forgiven through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which is designed to help public servants such as teachers, nurses and law enforcement officers get their debt canceled after 10 years of repayments.
- 54,300 borrowers will have $613 million forgiven through the SAVE plan.
- Another 39,200 borrowers will have $1.9 billion forgiven through adjustments to their income-driven repayment plans. These plans were sometimes mismanaged by loan servicers, which made it more difficult for some borrowers to achieve forgiveness.
How will I know if I qualify for forgiveness?
The Biden administration said that people who qualify under this latest round of debt cancellation will get an email about their approval.
The debt cancellation will then be processed in the next few weeks, it added.
Does Biden plan to offer more student loan forgiveness?
Yes, because the Biden administration is working on a new effort to provide broad-based loan forgiveness through the Higher Education Act.
The new plan could provide relief to about 30 million borrowers, either erasing some or all of their college loans.
The Biden administration on Wednesday said the public comment period on the new regulation closed on May 17, with the Department of Education now reviewing the thousands of comments it received.
“Our goal is to publish a final rule that results in delivering relief this fall,” the Education Department said in the Wednesday statement.
How can borrowers sign up for SAVE?
The SAVE plan is open for enrollment here.
The income-drive repayment plan bases monthly payments on income and family size, with some lower-income households with more family members paying little to nothing each month. For instance, a family of four with less than $50,000 in annual income would have monthly payments of $0.
Another benefit to the program is that it eliminates snowballing interest. In previous plans, borrowers sometimes saw their balances grow if their monthly payments didn’t cover all their interest, a financial situation called “negative amortization.” That’s why some borrowers may have left college with, say, $20,000 in debt but ended up with much larger balances even after years of repayment.
NEW YORK – The man accused of killing three people when drove drunk into a crowd on the Lower East Side on July 4th was arraigned on a host of charges Saturday.
Daniel Hyden of Monmouth Junction, N.J. is charged with aggravated vehicular homicide, aggravated vehicular assault, manslaughter, assault and operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated charges. Hyden was driving with a suspended license, prosecutors said.
According to prosecutors, Hyden, 44, drove a Ford F-150 pickup truck into the crowd at Corlears Hook Park just before 9 p.m. local time. He allegedly ran through a stop sign at the intersection of Water and Cherry Streets, drove up onto the sidewalk, slammed through the chain link fence, and into the crowd.
Eleven people were killed or injured, prosecutors said. The three people killed have been identified as Lucille Pinkney, 59, and her son Herman Pinkney, 38, and Ana Morel, 43. Another person was critically injured, and seven others hospitalized. The youngest victim was 11, according to prosecutors.
Responding police officers say they found Hyden on the ground next to the driver’s-side door, wearing pants but no shirt or shoes. He had bloodshot eyes, was stumbling and there was “a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage on his breath.”
“I hope we get justice”
Photos provided
On Friday, Family members of the victims returned to the scene, some breaking down in tears.
“I hope we get justice for my brother and my mother,” Diamond Pinkney said. “Herman, I love you. I’m going to do you proud.”
“We’re all devastated with this. It breaks my heart, and I’m so sad about it,” neighbor Nereida Garcia said.
The world’s oldest mummies have been around longer than the mummified pharaohs of Egypt and their ornate tombs — but the ravages of time, human development and climate change are putting these relics at risk.
Chile’s Atacama Desert was once home to the Chincorro people, an ancient population that began mummifying their dead 5,000 years ago, two millennia before the Egyptians did, according to Bernando Arriaza, a professor at the University of Tarapaca.
The arid desert has preserved mummified remains and other clues in the environment that give archaeologists information about how the Chincorro people once lived.
The idea to mummify bodies likely came from watching other remains naturally undergo the process amid the desert’s dry conditions. The mummified bodies were also decorated with reed blankets, clay masks, human hair and more, according to archaeologists.
While UNESCO has designated the region as a World Heritage Site, the declaration may not save all of the relics. Multiple museums, including the Miguel de Azapa Archaeological Museum in the ancient city of Arica, put the Chincorro culture on display. Some mummies and other relics are safely ensconced in those climate-controlled exhibits, but the remains still hidden in the arid desert remain at risk.
“If we have an increase in sea surface temperatures, for example, across the coast of northern Chile, that would increase atmospheric humidity,” said Claudio LaTorre, a paleo-ecologist with the Catholic University of Chile. “And that in turn would generate decomposition, (in) places where you don’t have decomposition today, and you would lose the mummies themselves.”
Other clues that archaeologists can find in the environment may also be lost.
“Human-induced climate change is one aspect that we’re really worried about, because it’ll change a number of different aspects that are forming the desert today,” said LaTorre.
Arriaza is working to raise awareness about the mummies, hoping that that will lead to even more preservation.
“It’s a big, big challenge because you need to have resources,” Arriaza said. “It’s everybody’s effort to a common goal, to preserve the site, to preserve the mummies.”
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