The White House promised on Tuesday to appeal two court rulings that halted parts of a major repayment program affecting millions of borrowers’ monthly bills.
This week was not the first time, and it will most likely not be the last, that legal challenges hindered President Joe Biden’s signature student loan forgiveness policies.
On Monday, federal judges in Missouri and Kansas banned portions of the president’s SAVE Plan, focusing on income-based repayment. The strategy, which the Biden administration attempted to roll out quickly, lowered the monthly repayment to zero for millions of borrowers. The secretary of education frequently describes it as the “most affordable repayment plan in history.”
Although the decision will not reverse any of the estimated $5.5 billion in student debt cancellation that the federal Education Department claims it has already provided to more than 400,000 borrowers through the SAVE Plan, the rulings prevent the agency from fully implementing the program, which was scheduled for next week.
That means that several aspects of the plan, such as reducing monthly repayments for some borrowers who took out undergraduate loans and wiping out the balances of student borrowers for a decade, would remain in legal uncertainty for the foreseeable future.
On Tuesday, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, announced that the administration would appeal the ruling. In the meantime, the affected borrowers may wait indefinitely for more reliable information about their debt forgiveness.
She added, “We will never stop fighting to lower monthly payments and help borrowers get out of their student debt, no matter how many times Republican officials try to stop us.”
Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, the leading Republican on the Senate education committee and a regular opponent of Biden’s student loan agenda hailed the injunctions while condemning the president’s income-based repayment strategy.
“These unfair, irresponsible policies from President Biden are nothing more than a cynical attempt to buy votes before the next election,” he added.
