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$9 Billion More In Student Loan Debt Relief: What To Know In PA
President Biden said debt relief is coming to another round of borrowers. Here's who will qualify:
PENNSYLVANIA — As student loan payments begin for more than 1 million people in Pennsylvania, the Biden administration announced it has approved $9 billion more in debt forgiveness for an additional 125,000 borrowers.
The cancellations that President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday come from making fixes to existing debt relief programs, the president said, as he works to fulfill a campaign promise to tackle student debt that was tripped up by a Supreme Court decision in June.
More than $5 billion of this aid will go to 53,000 borrowers who have worked in public service for at least 10 years, officials said. Another $2.8 billion is set for the 51,000 borrowers on income-driven repayment plans. And, $1.2 billion in forgiveness will go to borrowers with disabilities who have been approved for loan discharge by the Social Security Administration.
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“This kind of relief is lifechanging for individuals and their families, but it’s good for our economy as a whole as well,” President Joe Biden said Wednesday. Biden said that in total, his administration has canceled $127 billion in student debts for nearly 3.6 million borrowers.
Federal student loan payments resumed on Oct. 1, after being on a pandemic-related pause for more than three years.
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The average student loan debt for Keystone State borrowers is $35,385 and there are 1.82 million borrowers in the state, according to the Education Data Initiative. In total, Pennsylvania residents owe $64.5 billion.
On June 30, the Supreme Court struck down Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, which would have wiped out about a quarter of the country’s $1.7 trillion in outstanding student loan debt. As many as 14 million borrowers would have seen their debt entirely cleared.
In July, the Education Department began notifying 804,000 borrowers who owe $39 billion that their federal student loan balances will automatically be cleared. The department is currently working on a new student loan forgiveness rule as an alternate path to debt relief, as the Washington Post reported.
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