Biden Orders $1.2 Billion in Student Debt Cancelled for Firefighters, Teachers, Nurses

Zach Mentz – cleveland.com

The Biden administration on Thursday announced it will cancel about $1.2 billion in student loan debt for 35,000 borrowers who work in public service, including teachers, nurses and firefighters.

The relief is the result of fixes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. The PSLF program supports public servants by forgiving the remaining student loan balance for those who make 120 qualifying monthly payments.

To date, the Biden administration has forgiven $168.5 billion in student loan debt for 4.76 million borrowers, including $69.2 billion for 946,000 borrowers through PSLF.

Prior to the Biden admin, only 7,000 people had ever received debt relief through PSLF, according to the White House. The program was created by Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2007.

“Once again, the Biden-Harris administration delivers on its historic efforts to reduce the burden of student debt—making needed and long overdue improvements to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a news release. “The additional Americans approved for PSLF today are hardworking public servants who will finally receive the financial breathing room they were promised—and all PSLF recipients can easily track and manage the process through StudentAid.gov. This is relief that will bring real change in their lives and marks another win for this administration’s relentless and unapologetic work to fix a broken student loan system.”

Earlier this year in April, the Biden admin forgave about $5.8 billion for 77,000 borrowers through adjustments to PSLF. In January, the admin forgave about $4.9 billion in student loan debt for 73,000 borrowers via PSLF.

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