During his two terms as president, Joe Biden has used various programs to cancel $175 billion in student debt for nearly 5 million borrowers. Those efforts will likely fizzle out over the next four years.
Two of Biden’s key debt-relief initiatives are tied up in court: his SAVE income-driven repayment plan, intended to make student-loan payments cheaper for borrowers, and his broader loan forgiveness plan, set to benefit over 30 million borrowers.
Millions of federal borrowers remain in limbo as they wait for court decisions, and even if the plans do survive the courts, President-elect Donald Trump is unlikely to prioritize either the broad or the incremental relief efforts that Biden planned to implement.
“The Biden administration has taken a stance of, ‘We want to try and forgive as much debt as possible through various different programs,’” Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, told Business Insider. “And to put it mildly, we’re not going to see that same attitude under the Trump administration.”
Trump has offered minimal detail on his student loan plans once he takes office. However, he has criticized broad student-loan forgiveness and ran up backlogs processing student-debt cancellation applications for key programs during his first term. Some higher education experts said borrowers can expect targeted relief and cheaper payments through SAVE to cease under Trump, and GOP control over Congress and the White House could enable that to happen quicker.
Jared Bass, the senior vice president for education at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, told BI that Trump’s administration “will not be as kind to student-loan borrowers.”
“I think it’ll be rolling back a lot of the progress that we saw for borrowers and borrower protections,” Bass said.
While Trump’s team did not comment on future plans for debt relief, Trump called Biden’s student-loan forgiveness “vile” during a June campaign rally and said that the relief “is not even legal.”
The fate of cheaper payments under Biden’s SAVE plan
Biden’s SAVE plan lowered monthly payments for many borrowers based on their income and set them on a quicker path to relief. It has been blocked since July, following legal challenges from a group of GOP-led states.
8 million enrolled borrowers have been on an interest-free forbearance as they wait for a final court decision, and Cooper said that even if SAVE does prevail in federal court, Trump could work to eliminate the plan.
“It looks probably more likely than not to be struck down in courts, but even if it’s not, it’s likely that the Trump administration would move to try and reverse that through regulation,” Cooper said.
Borrowers would likely lose the lower monthly payments they were receiving under SAVE if Trump eliminates the program, Bass said.
To get rid of SAVE, Trump’s administration would have to undergo the negotiated rulemaking process, which takes time and would not happen immediately, and borrowers would likely be put back on other existing income-driven repayment plans. With Republicans holding a majority over the House and Senate, it’s possible that lawmakers would also introduce legislation to rein in loan cancellation plans like SAVE.
That could include the College Cost Reduction Act, introduced by GOP Rep. Virginia Foxx in January. This bill would constrain the Education Department’s ability to create new repayment plans by narrowing repayment options to a 10-year “mortgage-style” plan and an income-driven repayment plan.
“Student-loan debt is skyrocketing, and completion rates are plummeting. There’s bipartisan agreement that lasting reforms are needed to correct course,” Foxx previously told BI.
Uncertainty around public service loan forgiveness and relief for defrauded borrowers
Two other of Biden’s major relief efforts have been improvements to Public Service Loan Forgiveness, or PSLF, which forgives student debt for government and nonprofit workers after 10 years of qualifying payments, and borrower defense, which forgives debt for borrowers who were defrauded by the schools they attended.
Trump proposed eliminating PSLF during his first term but doing so would require congressional approval, and there has not yet been sufficient support among lawmakers to get rid of the program. However, Cooper said it’s possible that Trump’s administration could “take a bit more of a skeptical attitude” with borrower defense applications because the Education Department determines if a borrower faced fraud and meets the qualifications for relief.
“I think that if a loan cancellation program is set out clearly in law, the administration will have to implement that faithfully,” Cooper said. “If it’s a loan cancellation program that leaves a lot more discretion up to the Department of Education, we could certainly see some major swings in policy.”
Rep. Bobby Scott, the top Democrat on the House education committee, urged Biden’s Education Department in a November letter to follow through on its loan discharges for borrowers deemed eligible for relief before Trump takes office.
“As the Administration winds down its work, I am deeply concerned about the future and whether much of this progress will be undone, ultimately harming student borrowers, particularly those who have already been promised debt relief through Borrower Defense and through Public Service Loan Forgiveness,” Scott wrote.
Trump could also choose not to carry out Biden’s broader relief plans, including one that aims to provide relief to categories of borrowers, including those whose balances have grown due to unpaid interest, along with a separate proposal to provide relief to borrowers experiencing financial hardship.
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