Keystone Today

Under the direction of the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Education on April 19 canceled student loan debt for at least 40,000 Americans.

Under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program, these borrowers will receive immediate debt cancellation, according to Reuters. Several thousand borrowers with older loans also will receive forgiveness through income-driven repayment (IDR). Another 3.6 million borrowers will receive at least three years of additional credit toward IDR forgiveness. The plan's design had low-income borrowers and public servants in mind.

Republican leader of the U.S. House Budget Committee Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.) points out that Biden's student loan waiver will cost U.S. taxpayers approximately $3 billion, according to a House Republican news release.

“President Biden continues to pursue a permanent pandemic narrative at a tremendous cost to American taxpayers," Smith said in an April 20 release. "Today, President Biden added billions more to the taxpayer’s tab by cancelling the student loan debts of thousands of borrowers and rewriting repayment contracts for millions more with the swipe of a pen. This comes soon after the President extended a blanket student loan payment moratorium that is costing taxpayers $4.3 billion every month, and further fueling the inflation fire raging across our country. Democrats have made it clear that their goal is total forgiveness of all federal student loans – a gross attack on hardworking Americans who would have to foot the bill for a $1.6 trillion bailout to the wealthiest twenty percent of American households – those with graduate degrees, six-figure incomes, and high lifetime earnings.”

According to Fortune, Biden has canceled more student loan debt than any other president, having deployed nearly $20 billion in forgiveness since he took office in January 2021. That’s still only slightly more than 1% of all federal student loan debt, which currently stands at $1.7 trillion among 45 million borrowers.

Since the beginning of his presidency, Biden has felt the weight of congressional Democrats to cancel upward of $50,000 in student debt per person, according to News Nation Now. He has been reluctant to do so with an initial campaign proposal of $10,000 in forgiveness per federal borrower. 

The administration already has canceled more than $100 billion in student debt by discrete regulatory actions and extending the pandemic pause through August. However, none of this has been authorized by Congress. The Wall Street Journal editorial board argues that progressives won’t be satisfied until President Biden erases all $1.6 trillion in federal student debt.

According to estimates from educationdata.org, $64.5 billion in student loan debt belongs to Pennsylvania residents. The 1.82 million student borrowers that live in Pennsylvania represent 14% of the state's total residents.

On April 6, the Biden administration announced the extension of the student loan repayment pause through the end of August, per a White House press briefing. This pause on loan payments was initially issued in January 2021 in an effort to give Americans a chance to financially recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.