DOVER, Delaware — President Biden said Friday that 22 million Americans have applied for federal student loan relief since his administration launched the program this week, accusing Republicans of hypocrisy in trying to block the initiative. did.
In a speech at Delaware State University, a historically black school, Mr. Biden attempted to paint a stark contrast to Republicans three weeks before the midterm elections.
A day after the court dismissed two legal challenges to the action, which could cost the federal government hundreds of billions of dollars, Mr Biden said, “Republican congressmen and the Republican governor reject this remedy. I am doing everything I can for it,” he said. of dollars.
But later Friday, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily stayed the government’s debt forgiveness under the relief plan until the court ruled on an emergency request by a Republican-led state in a court dispute.
This plan will write off $10,000 of debt for those earning less than $125,000 a year, or $250,000 per household, and $20,000 for those who received Pell Grants for Low Income Families. For tens of millions of people, that level of relief would wipe out their federal student loan debt.
President Biden
With the midterm elections approaching, here stands President Biden.
“In less than a week, nearly 22 million people have provided us with information to consider for this life-changing relief,” Biden told an audience at the university. Grant.
The president compared the student debt relief plan to the $2 trillion tax cuts Republicans passed in 2017 and the loan forgiveness companies received during the pandemic. He specifically called out some of his most staunch critics, including Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz.
Ms. Green and her husband received a $180,000 loan from the Paycheck Protection Program, which was later forgiven, but called the student loan forgiveness “totally unfair.” Cruz called the fictitious beneficiary of student debt forgiveness “a lazy barista who wasted seven years in college he studied something completely useless.”
“Who the hell do you think they are?” Biden asked, cheering.
The Department of Education estimates the program will cost $379 billion over its lifetime of more than 30 years.
Mr. Biden said the costs were affordable, citing the administration’s track record of reducing the deficit. The federal budget deficit has shrunk from $2.8 trillion a year ago to $1.4 trillion in his 2022 fiscal year, largely due to a drop in pandemic emergency spending, according to Treasury Department figures. .
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The Biden administration began accepting applications for debt relief on Monday, and millions of borrowers have applied once the new portal goes live. Until then, he said he would not cancel any loans.
Biden invoked a 2003 federal law that allows the secretary of education to change financial assistance programs for students “in connection with war or other military operations, or national emergencies,” with debt forgiveness. established the program. The Biden administration claims the pandemic constitutes such an emergency.
Lawsuits were expected, but legal experts had expressed doubts about whether those seeking to shut down the program would be entitled to do so.
A federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush this week has dismissed lawsuits filed by Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina. The judge said the state had not proven that it was harmed by the debt forgiveness. However, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay on Friday.
Separately, Judge Amy Coney Barrett dismissed a policy challenge brought by the Wisconsin Taxpayers Association.
More legal challenges loom. The Biden administration, which raced to ensure the program worked before its opponents found a judge to freeze it, has already faced backlash for scaling back its initial ambitions.
In late September, the Department of Education indicated that some federal home education loans could no longer be consolidated into direct federal loans eligible for forgiveness. Hundreds of thousands of borrowers who thought they were may not be able to pay their debts.