When President Joe Biden speaks at a community college in New York on Wednesday, he’s expected to hit Republicans hard for budget cuts they are demanding as part of their bill to raise the debt ceiling.
Many of the programs Biden will warn about aren’t actually singled out in the GOP bill, which cuts spending across the board. But there’s at least one program congressional Republicans are specifically targeting – and it could change if and how millions of Americans pay back their federal student loans.
The future of Biden’s federal student loan forgiveness program will first be decided in the Supreme Court, but even if it survives that challenge, the program and the administration’s moves to lower payments for millions of Americans with federal loans are also under attack in Congress.
The House GOP bill would eliminate the federal student loan forgiveness program and block a proposed income-driven repayment plan that aims to reduce monthly payments for many borrowers and lower the total amount of money paid back over time. The new plan is still being finalized, but some provisions are expected to take effect later this year. Unlike the one-time loan forgiveness program, the new income-driven repayment plan would apply to future borrowers as well.
While the Limit, Save, Grow Act has slim to no chance of ever becoming law, it acts as a sort of wish list for some Republicans on Capitol Hill – and includes proposals that Republicans could try to add to the budget.
“Prior to the student loan pause we had a million people defaulting a year on loans, and often those are people who weren’t able to complete college or didn’t have the earnings they need to be able to afford to repay those loans,” Undersecretary for Education James Kvaal said in an interview with CNN.
“Income-driven repayment plans set your monthly payments based…
Read the full article here