The following is a statement from the U.S. Secretary of Education on the current student loan relief court rulings:
The Biden-Harris Administration strongly disagrees with the Eighth Circuit Court’s decision blocking the administration’s Saving on A Valuable Education (SAVE) plan. If allowed to stand, this ruling would force millions of borrowers to pay hundreds of dollars more each month. And the decision’s reasoning could also deny loan forgiveness to individuals who were expecting it after up to 25 years of faithful repayments. The ruling rejects a practice of providing loan forgiveness that goes back 30 years.
It’s shameful that politically motivated lawsuits waged by Republican elected officials are once again standing in the way of lower payments for millions of borrowers.
Borrowers enrolled in the SAVE Plan will be placed in an interest-free forbearance while our Administration continues to vigorously defend the SAVE Plan in court. The Department will be providing regular updates to borrowers affected by these rulings in the coming days.
It wasn’t so long ago that a million borrowers defaulted on their student loans every single year, mainly because they couldn’t afford the payments. The SAVE plan is a clearly authorized and urgently needed effort to fix what’s broken in our student loan system and make financing a higher education more affordable in this country. The Biden-Harris Administration remains committed to delivering as much relief as possible for as many borrowers as possible.
Already, we’ve approved $169 billion in relief for nearly 4.8 million Americans, including teachers, veterans, and other public servants, students who were cheated by their colleges, borrowers with disabilities, and more. From larger Pell Grants to free community college, President Biden, Vice President Harris, and I continue to believe that college affordability is a cause worth fighting for – and we’re not giving up.
–Miguel Cardona, U.S. Secretary of Education
