CBS News
Biden administration is forgiving $1.2 billion in student debt for 153,000 borrowers. Here’s who qualifies.
The Biden administration on Wednesday said it is automatically forgiving $1.2 billion in student debt for 153,000 borrowers. Loan holders whose debt will be discharged will receive an email from President Joe Biden today informing them of the forgiveness, the Department of Education said.
The debt relief is the latest push from the White House to address the nation’s $1.77 trillion in student debt after the Supreme Court last year invalidated the Biden administration’s plan for broad-based student loan forgiveness. That plan would have helped more than 40 million borrowers each wipe away up to $20,000 in debt.
With this latest round, the Biden administration said it has approved loan relief for nearly 3.9 million borrowers, many of whom have been repaying their debt for decades. The 153,000 borrowers who qualify for the latest debt forgiveness are those who are enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) repayment plan and who have made at least 10 years of payments.
“[I]f you’ve been paying for a decade, you’ve done your part, and you deserve relief,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona in the statement.
Who qualifies for this new debt forgiveness?
The Biden administration said 153,000 borrowers who are enrolled in the SAVE plan are eligible.
Those who are eligible have been enrolled in repayment plans for at least 10 years and originally borrowed $12,000 or less for college, the Education Department said.
For every $1,000 borrowed above $12,000, a borrower can receive forgiveness after an additional year of payments, the department added.
What steps do borrowers have to take?
None, according to the Education Department.
People receiving a loan discharge will get an email from Biden today about their loan forgiveness, and don’t need to take further action. Servicers will process the forgiveness in the next few days, and borrowers will see their loans forgiven in their accounts, according to the statement.
What is the SAVE plan?
The SAVE plan is income-driven repayment program, or IDR, that was created by the Biden administration. IDRs peg a borrower’s monthly payment to their income, lowering their financial burden.
The SAVE plan was designed to fix some problems with older IDR programs, such as allowing interest to snowball on a borrower’s debt.
All borrowers enrolled in SAVE can receive forgiveness after 20 years or 25 years of repayments, but the White House has developed the shorter 10-year forgiveness period for people with smaller balances.
Borrowers can apply for the SAVE plan here.
How many people are enrolled in SAVE?
There are currently 7.5 million borrowers enrolled in SAVE, the Education Department said on Wednesday. About 4.3 million of those have a $0 monthly payment.
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
CBS News
Sen. Mark Kelly says feds need to do a “better job” of letting Americans know “there’s a huge amount of misinformation” on election
Washington — Sen. Mark Kelly said Sunday that the federal government needs to do its part to inform Americans of the vast swath of election misinformation that’s being consumed on social media platforms like X, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram.
“It’s up to us, the people who serve in Congress and in the White House to get the information out there, that there is a tremendous amount of misinformation in this election, and it’s not going to stop on Nov. 5,” Kelly said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
Kelly, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he’s seen these misinformation operations target not only his state of Arizona, but also other battleground states.
“There is a very reasonable chance I would put it in the 20 to 30% range, that the content you are seeing, the comments you are seeing, are coming from one of those three countries: Russia, Iran, China,” Kelly said.
CBS News
In a committee hearing last month on foreign threats to the 2024 election, Kelly presented screenshots of Russian-made web pages showing fabricated headlines designed to look like Fox News and The Washington Post, targeted at voters in battleground states.
“So my constituents in Arizona and others — they seek to influence the outcome of these elections, and that is absolutely beyond the pale,” Kelly said at the Sept. 18 hearing. “We’ve got to do something about it.”
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump each have the support of 49% of Arizona voters, according to CBS News’ battleground tracker as of Sept. 30.
In another battleground state, Pennsylvania, Trump returned Saturday to hold a rally in Butler three months after an attempted assassination on him. He was joined by members of his own party and billionaire Elon Musk, who said Trump was the only way to preserve democracy and warned of a last election if he does not win in November.
Speaking to CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Kelly called the social media mogul a hypocrite.
“He’s standing next to the guy that tried to overturn the 2020 election on Jan. 6, saying that this is somehow going to be the last election and they’re going to take away your vote,” Kelly said. “And you know, it just doesn’t pass the logic test.”
At the White House press briefing on Friday, President Biden – speaking from the podium for the first time since taking office – said he’s confident of a free and fair election but alluded to the 2021 insurrection at the Capitol in his concerns on whether it will be a peaceful transfer of power.
“The things that Trump has said and the things that he said last time out when he didn’t like the outcome of the election were very dangerous,” Mr. Biden said. “If you notice, I noticed that the vice-presidential Republican candidate did not say he’d accept the outcome of the election, and they haven’t even accepted the outcome of the last election.”
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell says Gaza is a “hellscape for children”
Sen. Mark Kelly says feds need to do a “better job” of letting Americans know “there’s a huge amount of misinformation” on election
Ret. Gen. Frank McKenzie says Iran is the country that’s in a corner
UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell says Gaza is a “hellscape for children”
Sen. Mark Kelly says feds need to do a “better job” of letting Americans know “there’s a huge amount of misinformation” on election