Posted on Friday, December 20, 2024
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by Outside Contributor
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3 Comments
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President Joe Biden is transferring more student loan debt onto American taxpayers with only weeks left until he departs the Oval Office.
The Biden administration announced Friday that it is giving $4.28 billion of student debt relief to almost 55,000 more public service workers including teachers, nurses, and law enforcement officials.
“From Day One of my Administration, I promised to make sure that higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity,” Biden said in a statement.
“Because of our actions, millions of people across the country now have the breathing room to start businesses, save for retirement, and pursue life plans they had to put on hold because of the burden of student loan debt.”
The Department of Education is forgiving the debt through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, a policy that permits the forgiveness of remaining student loans for public employees who have made 120 monthly payments.
“Four years ago, the Biden-Harris Administration made a pledge to America’s teachers, service members, nurses, first responders, and other public servants that we would fix the broken Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, and I’m proud to say that we delivered,” said Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.
“The U.S. Department of Education’s successful transformation of the PSLF Program is a testament to what’s possible when you have leaders, like President Biden and Vice President Harris, who are relentlessly and unapologetically focused on making government deliver for everyday working people.”
The Biden administration greatly expanded PSLF as part of its broader agenda to cancel student loan debt by transferring the debt obligations to taxpayers. Over the past four years, the Biden administration has forgiven over $180 billion of student debt for 4.9 million borrowers with a variety of tools, according to the Education Department.
Of the $180 billion in relief, $56.5 billion of it has been handed out through income-driven repayment plans, such as the Saving on a Valuable Education plan, an initiative expected to cost $475 billion across 10 years.
President Biden has not stopped forgiving student loan debt despite the significant legal hurdles his various initiatives have faced. The Supreme Court ruled in June 2023 that Biden could not move forward with a $400 billion student loan cancellation plan under a law passed in 2003 allowing for student debt to be wiped out in cases of a national emergency.
With the end of Biden’s terms, the student loan cancellation plans are likely to go by the wayside. President-elect Donald Trump and many other Republicans have criticized the student debt transfers onto taxpayers as a bailout of highly educated elites with hard-earned tax dollars provided by the working and middle classes.
James Lynch is a news writer for National Review. He previously was a reporter for the Daily Caller. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and based in the Washington, D.C. area.
Reprinted with Permission from National Review – By James Lynch
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
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