Biden Administration Attempts to Cancel More Student Loan Debt

On Thursday, the Biden Administration announced plans to cancel another $1.2 billion in student loan debt, although the future of such efforts has now been thrown into doubt.

As Axios reports, the Department of Education announced that the canceled debt would apply to approximately 35,000 public service workers. This brings the total amount of student loan debt canceled by the Biden Administration to about $168.5 billion, affecting 4.76 million borrowers.

The Department of Education said that the relief would be provided through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, which allows public employees such as law enforcement and firefighters, as well as nonprofit employees, to apply for forgiveness after 10 years’ worth of payments have been made on their federal student loans.

Overall, PSLF has been used to forgive $69.2 billion in loans from 946,000 individuals.

Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement that this latest move “marks another win for this administration’s relentless and unapologetic work to fix a broken student loan system.”

“The additional Americans approved for PSLF today are hardworking public servants who will finally receive the financial breathing room they were promised,” Cardona added.

Biden’s first major attempt to cancel student loan debt was blocked by the Supreme Court in June of 2023 for being unconstitutional. Since then, Biden has attempted to further cancel student loan debt through other administrative means. However, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday that all of Biden’s student loan cancellation efforts are unconstitutional. After U.S. District Court Judge John Ross had already blocked some parts of the plan, the appeals court’s ruling blocked all remaining aspects of the student loan cancellation effort in a major blow to Biden.