WASHINGTON — The Biden administration announced Thursday it would cancel the student loans of 78,000 people working as teachers, nurses, firefighters and in other public service jobs as part of the president's initiative to lower student loan debt.
"These public service workers have dedicated their careers to serving their communities, but because of past administrative failures, never got the relief they were entitled to under the law," the White House said in the announcement. In 2021, the Biden administration offered a one-time fix that retroactively gave borrowers credit for past payments even if they had been in forbearance or had an ineligible loan. It laterpermanently. Payments made more than 15 days after their due date previously weren’t counted toward the 10 years, for example, but the new rules count payments that are late or made in installments.
President Joe Biden has on numerous occasions cut federal student loan debt in what his administration says is simply a correction of how borrowing from the federal government is supposed to work. One of the most ambitious of those moves is the administration's push for the SAVE plan, a retooled repayment plan for federal borrowers that the Biden administration has called a"student loan safety net," but opponents have targeted as a backdoor attempt at free college.