16 million student-loan borrowers have now been approved for debt cancellation, Biden says — but they won’t see relief ‘in the coming days’ due to a GOP lawsuit – By Ayelet Sheffey (Business Insider) / Nov 3, 2022
- The Education Department has so far approved 16 million student-loan borrowers for debt relief, Biden said.
- But while they should be getting relief in the next few days, a GOP group stopped that from happening.
- The relief is currently on pause until the 8th Circuit makes a final decision on the legality of the relief.
Millions of student-loan borrowers could be getting debt relief this week — but a group of Republicans are making sure that doesn’t happen.
On Thursday, President Joe Biden wrote on Twitter that 26 million student-loan borrowers have so far applied for up to $20,000 in debt relief through the online form at studentaid.gov, and as of this week, the Education Department will have approved 16 million of them to get their loans forgiven.
However, those borrowers won’t be seeing the benefits anytime soon because the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily paused the relief, in response to a lawsuit filed by six Republican-led states who argued the policy would hurt their states’ tax revenues, along with those of loan company MOHELA.
“That’s 16 million Americans, so far, who should be seeing student debt relief in the coming days,” Biden wrote. “But that relief is on hold – because Republican elected officials are doing everything they can to deny it, even to their own constituents.”
