By Collin Binkley
The Biden administration announced Thursday it will automatically erase student loan debt for more than 300,000 Americans with severe disabilities that leave them unable to earn significant incomes.
The move will wipe out more than $5.8 billion in debt, according to the Education Department, and it marks the start of a broader overhaul of a program that has been criticized for having overly burdensome rules.
“We’ve heard loud and clear from borrowers with disabilities and advocates about the need for this change and we are excited to follow through on it,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement.
The federal government offers student debt relief for people who are “totally and permanently disabled” and have limited incomes. But the current rules require them to submit documentation of their disability and undergo a three-year monitoring period to prove they’re earning little pay.
Tens of thousands of people have been dropped from the program and had their loans reinstated simply because they failed to submit proof of their earnings, however, and critics say the complex rules deter some from applying.
Advocates have pressed the Education Department to eliminate the monitoring period entirely and to provide automatic debt relief to people who the Social Security Administration already identifies as permanently disabled.
Under the new action, both demands will be met. Starting in September, the Education Department will start erasing student debt for 323,000 Americans identified in Social Security records as being permanently disabled.
Borrowers will be notified once they have been approved for relief. All of the loans are expected to be discharged by the end of the year.
The department also plans to eliminate the program’s three-year monitoring period, which was previously suspended during the pandemic. That change is expected to be cemented during a federal rulemaking process set to start in October, the agency said.
“This is going to be a smooth process for our borrowers,” Cardona said in a call with reporters. “They’re not going to have to be applying for it or getting bogged down by paperwork.”
Advocates celebrated the change as a victory. Aaron Ament, president of the National Student Legal Defense Network, called it a “life-changing” step.
“This is a huge moment for hundreds of thousands of borrowers with disabilities who can now move on with their lives and won’t be trapped in a cycle of debt,” he said.
Democrats in Congress said it was the right move. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, said borrowers shouldn't face paperwork and other administrative hurdles if the federal government already knows they're eligible for loan forgiveness.
“With this simple and sensible change, more than 320,000 borrowers and their families are being freed from the burden of student loans that they should not have to repay,” Scott said in a statement.
The program has faced scrutiny since 2016, when a federal watchdog agency found that the income reporting process posed an obstacle for borrowers. In 98% of cases in which loans were restored, it was because borrowers did not submit paperwork, not because their earnings were too high, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported.
The Trump administration started granting automatic loan cancellations to eligible military veterans in 2019, but the move did not apply to hundreds of thousands of other Americans with disabilities.
In March, the Education Department canceled debt for more than 40,000 borrowers whose debt had been restored because of paperwork issues, but it indicated further changes would need to come through a federal rulemaking process.
Cardona announced the change as the White House faces mounting pressure to pursue wider debt forgiveness.
Democrats including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, N.Y., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Mass., have called on Biden to erase $50,000 in student debt for all borrowers as a way to jumpstart the economy.
Biden has asked the Education and Justice departments to assess the legality of mass debt cancellation. Cardona said Thursday that those conversations are “still underway.” Meanwhile, he said, his agency is working to improve other debt forgiveness programs that target specific groups of borrowers.
“It’s an effort to show that we are working to improve targeted loan relief and help our borrowers,” he said.
These are the headlines you Need2Know:
*President Trump meets with Russian President Putin in Helsinki, Finland, days after the indictment of 12 Russian operatives for trying to disrupt the 2016 election.
*A federal judge blasts the HHS giving them one more week to reunite 2,000 families at the border after the administration missed the initial deadline.
*Protests erupted in Chicago over the weekend after a popular barber was shot and killed by the police.
*Novak Djokovic and Angelique Kerber won Wimbledon titles over the weekend. And France took home the World Cup.
Cheddar's Hope King gives us the details.
Before his private meeting with Russian President VladimirPutin, President Trump tweeted that the U.S.-Russia relationship has taken a hit because of the federal investigation into election interference, which Trump says is a "Rigged Witch Hunt!" Trump also labeled the EU as "foes" of the United States over the weekend, further alienating allies that he has been criticizing for the past week. Cheddar's J.D. Durkin brings us the latest from Helsinki, Finland.
President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin started their heavily scrutinized one-on-one meeting in Helsinki, Finland, on Monday. "[Putin] has been in power for a very long time, almost 20 years now, he is a former KGB officer, and he's not interested in playing nice," says Natalia Antonova, former editor of The Moscow News. The meeting comes just days after the U.S. Justice Department indicted 12 Russian military officers for trying to influence the 2016 presidential election. Before the meeting, Trump described the federal investigation as a "Rigged Witch Hunt!"
While the Trump baby blimp flew over London, tempers flared on the streets. Many of the same passions that help fuel Donald Trump's popularity in the U.S. are very much alive and well in the UK.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's move Friday was the first time the probe has targeted the Russian government. The Russian-orchestrated conspiracy didn't, however, influence vote counts, says Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
The president denied that he criticized British Prime Minister Theresa May's handling of Brexit in an interview with The Sun newspaper, calling it "fake news." His comments come just a day after The Sun posted its recorded interview online. Trump and May held a joint press conference on Friday where they both confirmed that the UK and the U.S. would strike up a special trade deal after Brexit.
These are the headlines you Need2Know:
*President Trump is in England preparing for a joint news conference with Theresa May. While the duo dined last night, The Sun newspaper published a sit-down interview with the president where he criticized May’s handling of Brexit. Trump warned trade deals with England could be nixed if Brexit isn’t handled properly.
*FBI agent Peter Strzok was removed from working on the Hillary Clinton email probe and the Trump-Russia investigation after text messages were discovered in which he criticized the president.
*Stormy Daniels made an encore appearance at the same strip club she was arrested at the night prior.
*A Kansas City water park will not reopen after a 10-year-old boy died on a water slide.
*Serena Williams beat Julia Görges of Germany yesterday to reach her 10th Wimbledon final.
Cheddar Big News's Jill Wagner gives us the details.
President Trump, on his last day at the NATO summit in Brussels, declared that other members of the alliance had agreed to increase defense spending. Minutes later, however, French president Emmanuel Macron disputed those claims, saying that all members had committed to the previous spending target. Trump is now in London for his first visit to the British capital since winning the White House.
These are the headlines you Need2Know:
* Confusion at the NATO summit after President Trump said allies will add billions of dollars to defense spending. But French president Emmanuel Macron rebuffed those claims.
* Stormy Daniels was arrested after an alleged misdemeanor at a Columbus, Ohio, strip club. Her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, has also been working to reunite families at the southern border.
* The U.S. Senate voted yesterday on a non-binding resolution giving it a say on what tariffs are levied and against whom.
* New evidence prompted the Department of Justice reopened the case of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy who was killed in 1955 in Money, Miss.
* John Schnatter, founder and former CEO of Papa John’s, has resigned his chairman role after a racially-charged comment on a conference call.
* Americans made it to both the men’s and women’s Wimbledon semifinals, the first time since 2009.
Cheddar Big News' Jill Wagner tells us the latest.
President Donald Trump's aggressive stance at the two-day NATO summit in Brussels, on top of his antagonizing trade policies, have "brought the transatlantic alliance to the lowest point,” says Joshua Meltzer, senior fellow of global economy and development at the Brookings Institute.
