President Joe Biden recently unveiled plans to use a modified version of the Higher Education Act of 1965 to try and cancel student loans, focusing on “racial equity.”
In June 2023, the White House released a statement in which Biden said that the “Department of Education began pursuing an alternative path to debt relief through negotiated rulemaking under the Higher Education Act. Today’s announcement lays out the plans the Biden-Harris Administration is pursuing through that effort.”
Biden announces plans to cancel student loans for tens of millions through an amended version of the Higher Education Act of 1965.
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) April 8, 2024
“In total, these plans would fully eliminate accrued interest for 23 million borrowers, would cancel the full amount of student debt for over 4 million borrowers, and provide more than 10 million borrowers with at least $5,000 in debt relief or more,” the president added in the statement.
The Post Millennial pointed out that the plan in the modified version of the Higher Education Act of 1965 is nearly 1,000 pages long and has been reauthorized on multiple occasions. The White House released a fact sheet, noting that the student relief will likely target “racial equity” goals and would focus on those with “disproportionately high debt burdens.”
“Black and Latino borrowers will get substantial benefits from this relief,” the sheet continued.
The relief program is set to remove debts of “more than 30 million borrowers” in the U.S.
The Biden administration said it would try to “forgive” student loan debt for “borrowers who attended institutions or programs that closed and failed to provide sufficient value—for example, that leave graduates no better than what someone with a high school diploma earns—would be eligible for relief under this proposal.”
In its statement, the Biden administration criticized Republicans in Congress for opposing the use of billions of taxpayer funds to cancel student loan debt and praised the president for pledging to help borrowers.
Biden recently traveled to Madison, Wisconsin, where he announced the relief program.
Vice President Kamala Harris touted the plan in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff spread the word in Phoenix, Arizona, and Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona traveled to New York City to meet with borrowers benefiting from the Biden administration’s student debt relief program.
