The White House announced Thursday it’s waiving another $5.8 billion in student loans for 78,000 public service workers.
The administration is also sending emails signed by President Joe Biden to an additional 380,000 borrowers in the public sector, letting them know they are one to two years away from getting the same debt cancellation.
The latest student loan relief comes amid the president’s bid for reelection and is likely to rankle Biden’s Republican opponents, who have criticized him for trying to “buy votes.” Others have said the president’s loan forgiveness efforts have come at the expense of the rollout of a new college financial aid form, which has been rife with errors.
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It’s yet another instance in recent months of Biden making direct appeals to the borrowers he’s singling out through various executive tools at his disposal. This time, he is expanding his messaging campaign to include Americans on the brink of qualifying for similar cancellation under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, a special loan repayment plan for teachers, firefighters and other public service workers.
In his State of the Union address this month, Biden underscored the reforms he’s made to the program by increasing the number of borrowers eligible for relief.
“When I was told I couldn’t universally just change the way in which we dealt with student loans, I fixed two student loan programs that already existed to reduce the burden of student debt for nearly 4 million Americans,” he said.
Under the PSLF program, borrowers who have worked in public service and paid down their loans for a decade or more qualify for full relief from their federal loans. In 2021, the administration tacked on more time to thousands of borrowers’ repayment timelines.
Officials have been adjusting the accounts of millions of PSLF borrowers, as well as those in payment plans based on their incomes. They’re expected to wrap up their calculations by July.
Zachary Schermele covers education and breaking news for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele.
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