Mass student loan forgiveness is terrible policy (see this report for a comprehensive list of reasons), but that hasn’t stopped the Biden administration from trying to forge ahead. While the Supreme Court overturned the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness plan, every few weeks, the administration announces another batch of loans that have been forgiven.
The administration recently celebrated that since taking office it has succeeded in forgiving $167 billion of student loans for 4.75 million borrowers by transferring the financial burden from the students who took out the loans to taxpayers who did not. And they aren’t going to stop—the administration’s spokeswoman declared, “President Biden has vowed to use every tool available to cancel student debt for as many borrowers as possible, as quickly as possible.” President Biden himself stated, “I will never stop working to cancel student debt—no matter how many times Republican elected officials try to stop us.”
But if student loan forgiveness lost in the Supreme Court, how are so many student loans still being forgiven? The answer is that there isn’t a student loan forgiveness plan, there are many plans, some of which are already up and running. Previous laws had already left a plethora of methods to forgive student loans, and many of those laws may give the Secretary of Education the ability to expand those programs. The administration is also claiming existing law gives it the authority to create new ways to forgive student loans.
So the student loans the Biden administration already has or wants to forgive are a combination of existing programs, existing programs the administration has expanded, and new programs the administration is seeking to implement.
Here’s a rundown of the administration’s student loan forgiveness plans and actions, which I’ll update monthly.