More than 153,000 student loan borrowers will soon receive an exciting message in their inbox — an email from President Joe Biden informing them that they qualify for early loan forgiveness, the president announced at Culver City’s Julian Dixon Library on Wednesday, Feb. 21.
Biden’s latest executive action will provide an additional $1.2 billion in debt forgiveness to borrowers enrolled in his Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) repayment plan.
“This kind of relief can be life changing for individuals and for their families and it’s good for the economy,” said Biden. “By freeing millions of Americans from the crushing debt of student loans, it means they can finally get on with their lives, instead of their lives being put on hold.”
This debt cancellation means borrowers can think about buying a home, starting a family and putting money in savings, instead of “working like a devil” and still seeing their debt grow under the nation’s “broken student loan system,” he said.
In total, the Biden administration has approved nearly $138 billion in student debt cancellation for 3.9 million borrowers — an considerable figure that nonetheless pales in comparison to the $400 million Biden sought to cancel before the Supreme Court struck down the effort last year. The SAVE Plan is Biden’s plan B.
“Early in my time I announced a major plan to provide millions of families with relief for their college student debt,” said Biden. “But MAGA Republican hands in congress, elected officials and special interests stepped in and sued me and the supreme court blocked it, but that didn’t stop me.”
The lucky 153,000 email recipients will be the first to benefit from a SAVE Plan policy that provides loan forgiveness to borrowers who have been making payments for at least ten years on loans of $12,000 or less.
The president, meanwhile, benefits from the upbeat messaging in an election year and the chance that many of the millennial borrowers will circulate the email on their social media platforms.
Biden was joined on Wednesday by Sen. Alex Padilla, Rep. Sydney Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Culver City), LA City Mayor Karen Bass, Dr. Jessica Saint-Paul and Culver City Mayor Yasmine-Imani, who thanked him for being the first sitting president in over three decades to speak in the city.
Biden made the Culver City stop during his three-day fundraising trip to California, which began with a Tuesday evening private event at the Los Angeles residence of longtime Democratic donors Haim and Cheryl Saban. During the fundraiser he vowed to protect abortion rights, increase taxes for billionaires, strengthen the Affordable Care Act and Medicare and stand up to Putin.
He also criticized the “chaos” and “disunity” of the Republican party and said “Trump is dragging us back to the past and not leading us to the future.”
The president will head to San Francisco on Wednesday afternoon to attend two campaign events, before rounding off his golden state trip with a fundraiser in Los Altos Hills on Thursday.
His Culver City stop was prompted by the decision to move up the SAVE Plan’s scheduled round of debt forgiveness by six months. The plan was finalized in late 2023 and provides eligible borrowers with reductions on their monthly payments — all the way down to $0 — based on their current income.
Padilla called the latest round of relief “welcome news, frankly, for an American public that has grown tired of an extreme conservative majority on the Supreme Court blocking our ability to help those in need.”
Both the initial effort and the SAVE Plan have been lambasted by Republicans who called the programs unfair and financially unsound. An effort to repeal the SAVE Plan passed the Republican controlled house, but died in the Democratic controlled senate.
“Once again, Biden’s newest student loan scheme only shifts the burden from those who chose to take out loans to those who decided not to go to college, paid their way or already responsibly paid off their loans,” Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said in a statement when introducing a resolution to overturn the SAVE Plan in September 2023.
Kalamanger-Dove, meanwhile, praised the president’s persistence in pushing through student debt forgiveness programs despite resistance.
“Our president made promises to our students that we wouldn’t forget them,” she said, “and he’s keeping those promises despite obstruction from the courts, lawsuits designed to further burden our students in debt and in opposition to the false premise that students don’t deserve help.”
The relief announced on Wednesday applies to borrowers who have been made payments for ten or more years on loans of $12,000 or less. For every $1,000 borrowed above $12,000, SAVE Plan participants will need to have made payments for an additional year to qualify for the cancellation.
For example, a borrower $14,000 loan will need to have made payments for twelve years to be among the lucky 153,000 email recipients. Next week, the Department of Education will email more borrowers who qualify for early debt relief and encourage them to enroll in the SAVE Plan.
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