Education Department officials will spend all day Thursday and Friday wrangling with borrowers and experts over the details of the Biden administration’s latest student loan forgiveness proposal.
President Joe Biden’s most recent plan, a win for progressives, would ease the burdens of the many Americans who feel financially crushed by the weight of their student loans.
Whether the plan can make it through government red tape – and the courts – is a different story.
Biden wants to give relief to borrowers experiencing the greatest “hardship.” Exactly who would qualify, officials are suggesting, would depend on dozens of factors, including a person’s household income, age or other debt they have.
The meetings come after the U.S. Supreme Court last summer dealt Biden a major political blow, striking down the initial plan for mass student loan forgiveness the White House sought during the pandemic, which relied on Biden’s executive authority to take action during a national emergency.
In the wake of that ruling, the administration turned to its Plan B. The Education Department instead pursued debt relief through changes to a different law – the Higher Education Act.
The new strategy involves a lot more red tape. It calls for a bureaucratic process known as negotiated rulemaking, or “neg reg,” involving a group of stakeholders who deliberate regulations with Education Department officials. The affair can be a slog.
But this week’s meetings could be the most consequential – they’re likely the last before the regulations have to be set in stone by November. Any new rules would go into effect by July 2025.
The first few rounds of talks happened last summer and fall. The negotiators made some news, resulting in proposed policies to forgive the loans of people whose outstanding balances exceed the amount they originally borrowed. Forgiveness for older borrowers who began repayment at least two decades ago was on the table, too.
But after those meetings wrapped up, advocates for people with debt and congressional Democrats, including many of the negotiators, felt dissatisfied. As pressure mounted, USA TODAY first reported the Biden administration decided to extend the talks.
Progressives were pleased. A few committee members have since praised the Biden administration for coming up with a policy that acknowledges what they say is a fundamental truth of America’s student loan debt crisis: factors like age or disability often affect people’s ability to pay back their loans.
“We’re thrilled to get this language at all,” said Jessica Ranucci, a negotiator and attorney at the New York Legal Assistance Group.
In the last week, others have criticized the Biden administration’s latest four-page proposal as too vague – a concern likely prompted by the White House’s wariness about possible court challenges from conservative groups.
Officials are probably right to be worried. The policies are still far from official, and yet conservative legal groups are already poking holes in them. To keep those groups at bay, less specificity might be the department’s best strategy, according to Ed Boltz, a bankruptcy attorney and an alternate negotiator on the panel.
“To the degree that it’s vague, I think that’s probably not a bad thing,” he told USA TODAY ahead of the talks.
In a statement to USA TODAY, the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which represents organizations that have challenged Biden’s student loan proposals in the past, questioned the viability of the Education Department’s latest proposal. Sheng Li, an attorney for the alliance, said the Supreme Court’s decision from this summer would prevent Biden from canceling the student loans of any borrower determined to be experiencing hardship.
The question of whether the regulations will pass legal muster has loomed over the discussions from the start. But fear of litigation shouldn’t hold the administration back from delivering help to borrowers who need it, said Jalil Bishop, a negotiator representing graduate student borrowers.
“We also can’t negotiate against ourselves,” he said.
USA TODAY will be following the meeting with live updates. Follow here for more.
Neg reg talks:Biden’s new student loan forgiveness plan is underway. 5 key takeaways from the first day
What is Biden proposing?
The committee’s last round of meetings ended in a cloud of frustration.
Many members on the panel were unhappy that federal officials seemed to be punting on a proposal for broader student debt relief – even after researchers urged the committee to provide automatic relief to households making less than $71,000, news that USA TODAY broke in early December.
The administration’s new plan includes 17 factors for the U.S. education secretary to consider going forward when canceling loans. Among them are how much debt a person already has, whether they received federal financial aid in college and the type of college they attended.
In recent weeks, federal officials have touted their decision to extend the talks as evidence of the administration’s commitment to easing Americans’ student loan debt.
“The Biden-Harris Administration will never stop working to deliver student debt relief for borrowers,” said James Kvaal, the education undersecretary, in a statement last month.
How to watch and comment: Debates over latest student loan relief proposal
Before the pandemic, neg reg sessions were held in person, in a hearing room in Washington, D.C. Few members of the public were able to listen in on the discussions. But since then, and in the wake of the pandemic, the format has changed.
The Thursday and Friday sessions run from 10 a.m. ET to 4 p.m., with an hour lunch break at noon. To watch, sign up here. The rough agenda can be found here.
The last hour of the Thursday session will be reserved for public comment. To request an opportunity to comment, send your name and, if applicable, organization to negreghearing@ed.gov. Requests must be received by noon E.T. Thursday. There will not be a public comment period during the Friday session.
Who are the stakeholders who will be debating the new student loan forgiveness plan?
Negotiators include a mix of borrowers, consumer and civil rights advocates, state officials, attorneys general, college representatives and student loan company experts.
Click here to see the names of the primary negotiators and their backups.
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