The 74,000 borrowers who have their student loan debt canceled by the White House

Some 74,000 student borrowers are to have their debt written off by the US government. They qualify by being public service workers that have had more than 10 years of service.

“My Administration is able to deliver relief to these borrowers — and millions more — because of fixes we made to broken student loan programs that were preventing borrowers from getting relief they were entitled to under the law,” Biden said in the press release.

30,000 of the borrowers have been repaying their debt for at least 20 years. The administration lauded the plans in the press release, but Biden’s track record on student debt is less than flattering, by his own measure.

What is the state of student debt repayment?

Originally, student debt was to be cancelled, all $1.7 trillion of it. This was watered down to $20,000 per student and then scrapped entirely as the Supreme Court ruled the move a governmental overreach.

Instead, borrowers have some protection with the SAVE plan. For those signed up, The amount of income protected from repayment increased to 225 percent. In real terms, this means a single borrower earning less than $32,800 would have their monthly payments reduced to zero dollars. Undergraduate loans have had their monthly repayments cut in half from 10% to 5% of discretionary income. Interest is also capped.