Biden-Harris Administration Approves Additional $5.8 Billion in Student Debt Relief for Public Service Workers

By Karen Stokes

On Thursday, the Biden-Harris Administration announced the approval of $5.8 billion in additional student loan debt relief for 77,700 borrowers. These approvals are the result of fixes made by the Administration to Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF).

The announcement brings the total loan forgiveness approved by the Biden-Harris Administration to $143.6 billion for 3.96 million Americans. This action builds on President Biden and his Administration’s efforts to provide debt relief to as many borrowers as possible as quickly as possible.

“For too long, our nation’s teachers, nurses, social workers, firefighters, and other public servants faced logistical troubles and trap doors when they tried to access the debt relief they were entitled to under the law. With this announcement, the Biden-Harris Administration is showing how we’re taking further steps not only to fix those trap doors, but also to expand opportunity to many more Americans,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.

Total relief through PSLF is now $62.5 billion for 871,000 borrowers since October 2021. Prior to the Biden-Harris Administration’s fixes to PSLF, only about 7,000 borrowers had ever received forgiveness.

Beyond the relief under PSLF, the Biden-Harris Administration has also approved:

• $45.6 billion for 930,500 borrowers through improvements to income-driven repayment plans.
• $22.5 billion for more than 1.3 million borrowers who were cheated by their schools, saw their institutions precipitously close, or are covered by related court settlements
• $11.7 billion for almost 513,000 borrowers with a total and permanent disability.
• $1.7 billion for 29,700 borrowers through administrative adjustments to IDR payment counts

Wisconsin has a State Borrowing Count of 16,410 with an outstanding Balance of $997.4 million.

“Today’s announcement comes on top of the significant progress we’ve achieved for students and student loan borrowers in the past few years. This includes: providing the largest increases in Pell Grants in over a decade to help families who earn less than roughly $60,000 a year; fixing Income-Driven Repayment plans so borrowers in repayment for years get the relief they earned; and creating the most generous Income-Driven Repayment plan in history– the SAVE plan. Borrowers can go to studentaid.gov to apply. And, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision on my Administration’s original student debt relief plan, we are continuing to pursue an alternative path to deliver student debt relief to as many borrowers as possible as quickly as possible,” the President said.