https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/15/white-house-expands-plans-to-cancel-student-debt-00141652
The White House on Thursday unveiled a significant expansion of its plans to cancel student debt as President Joe Biden looks to run on the issue during this years election.
The draft proposal released by the Biden administration would empower the Education Department to discharge the student loans owed by borrowers who are experiencing financial hardship and unlikely to be able to repay their debts.
The department proposed a one-time debt relief program that would automatically cancel debt in circumstances where its data suggests that borrowers are at least 80 percent likely to default on their debt within the next two years. The proposal also contemplates applications from individual borrowers experiencing a hardship.
It outlines more than a dozen factors that the administration will use to determine financial hardship, such as household income, total debt balance, history of loan repayment and receipt of a Pell grant. The proposal did not define specific thresholds for those factors.
Well leave no stone unturned in the fight to fix a broken student loan system, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said while unveiling the plan.
The proposal will be debated during a public hearing next Thursday and Friday of a federal rulemaking panel. The Education Department has previously said it plans to officially release the plans for public comment in May.
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The draft plan says that in cases where borrowers are experiencing hardship and unlikely to repay their loans the costs of enforcing the full amount of the debt are not justified by the expected benefits of continued collection of the entire debt.