By Roger Caldwell
The Biden-Harris administration on February 21, 2024, announced the cancellation of more than $1 billion in student loans debt for over 150,000 additional borrowers across the country. This move brings the debt relief total to $138 billion for nearly 4 million Americans.
Delivering on his promises, the president on day one has taken action on the student loan crisis. The Supreme Court has done everything to stop and prevent student borrowers from receiving loan forgiveness, but Biden refused to take no for an answer.
There is a crisis in America and many residents were not able to buy a home or take a vacation. President Biden and Vice President Harris are focused on working to alleviate the crushing burden of student loans to rob Peter to pay Paul. As the interest rates continue to grow, you take one step forward and two backward. With the new SAVE plan from Biden’s administration lives are being changed, and some Americans are able to breathe again.
The Biden-Harris Administration believes that education beyond high school will unlock doors to opportunity. Biden and Harris have been working to fix the broken student loan system, and make college more affordable. On August 22, 2023, the administration announced the official launch of, ”The Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan.”
This is the most affordable repayment plan ever created for college/university students. The SAVE plan is an income-driven repayment (IDR) plan that calculates payments based on a borrower’ income and family size. The SAVE plan will cut many borrowers’ monthly payments to zero and will save other borrowers around $1,000 per year. It will also prevent balances from growing because of unpaid interest and will get more borrowers closer to forgiveness faster.
The Administration estimates that over 20 million borrowers could benefit from the SAVE plan. “Today I’m proud to announce a new program called the SAVE plan. It’s the most affordable student loan plan ever. Borrowers can sign up by visiting StudentAid.gov/Save,” says President Biden.
The SAVE plan will cut payments on undergraduate loans in half. Borrowers with undergraduate loans will have their payments reduced from 10% to 5% of their discretionary income. Those who have undergraduate and graduate loans will pay a weighted average between 5% and 10% of their incomebased upon the original principal balances of their loan.
This is very complicated and many Americans and especially Black people don’t know the SAVE program exist. The Biden-Harris administration has done a poor job, getting the information to the masses of undergraduate, graduate students.
Many Americans don’t know that the Biden team across the country has brought the debt relief to a total of $138 billion for nearly 4 million students. This should be a major news story for the news media, and the SAVE plan and cancel student debt should be one of Biden’s major accomplishments. Millions of Americans are free from student loan debt, because of President Biden.
Many of these people took out loans less than $12,000 and have been paying them back for more than a decade. No one making less than about $15.00 per hour should be required to make a student loan payment, and if you find yourself struggling to make a payment, communicate with your loan service.
Remember there are 43.6 million borrowers who owe a collective $1.77 trillion, for money they borrowed to go to school. Stay ahead and create a plan that works for you, your family and your budget.
