In response to another historic student loan debt relief announcement from the Biden-Harris administration, DNC Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd released the following statement: 

“While President Biden continues to deliver on his promise to fix the broken student loan system and make college more affordable, Donald Trump is railing against life-changing relief for hardworking students and families. By canceling more student debt than any president in history and providing billions in relief for millions of student loan borrowers, President Biden is growing the economy from the bottom up and middle out — even as Trump and MAGA Republicans try to stand in the way.”

NEW: President Biden’s administration is canceling $1.2 billion in student loans as he continues to deliver on providing relief to hardworking students and families.

Politico: “Biden will email 153,000 student loan borrowers: I’m canceling your debt”

Washington Post: “Biden administration cancels $1.2B in student loans with new repayment plan”

“Starting Wednesday, President Biden will email 153,000 student loan borrowers enrolled in his signature repayment plan to let them know their debts — totaling $1.2 billion — have been forgiven.

“The notice makes good on the administration’s promise to accelerate forgiveness for borrowers with low original balances who are enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education (Save) plan.”

President Biden has taken historic action to make college more affordable – under his watch, millions of Americans have gotten their debt canceled.

Washington Post: “With this latest round of student loan forgiveness, the Biden administration has approved almost $138 billion in debt relief for 3.9 million people.”

The Guardian: “Biden launches ‘most affordable ever’ student loan repayment plan”

New York Times: “Biden Cancels Another $5 Billion in Student Loan Debt”

Forbes: “How Biden Forgiving Another $9 Billion In Student Loan Debt Helps Close The Racial Wealth Gap”

“The burden of student loan debt has reached crisis levels, disproportionately affecting students of color and amplifying the racial wealth gap. Now, President Biden’s latest step will help 125,000 borrowers by erasing $9 billion in debt through existing programs. This debt load is not distributed evenly across populations, it falls disproportionately on students of color and their families who are actively trying to close the racial wealth gap.”

Meanwhile, Donald Trump failed to deliver on student loan debt forgiveness, and he has taken credit for his hand-picked Supreme Court justices striking down President Biden’s student loan debt forgiveness plan. 

Daily Mail: “Former President Donald Trump … went after President Joe Biden for his student loan forgiveness plan. ‘Joe Biden and the Radical Left Democrats have just orchestrated another election enhancing money grab, this time to the tune of $300,000,000,000 – and just like I predicted, it’s coming right out of the pocket of the working-class Americans who are struggling the most!’ Trump said in a statement released Thursday morning.”

CNBC: “Former President Donald Trump … has a long record of opposing student loan forgiveness.”

“‘Today, the Supreme Court also ruled that President Biden cannot wipe out hundreds of billions, perhaps trillions of dollars, in student loan debt, which would have been very unfair to the millions and millions of people who paid their debt through hard work and diligence; very unfair,’ Trump said at a campaign event in June.”

Trump campaign press release: “Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down massive wins for the American people— halting Joe Biden’s unconstitutional student loan gimmick, restoring fairness to the college admissions process, and applying the strongest safeguards to First Amendment rights in a generation. One thing is clear: these wins were only made possible through President Trump’s strong nomination of three distinguished and courageous jurists to the Supreme Court.”

Associated Press: “Education advocates say President Donald Trump’s budget contradicts his campaign pledge to make college more affordable with its proposed elimination of subsidized student loans and cuts in other programs that help students pay tuition. … When he accepted the Republican presidential nomination last year, Trump had said, ‘We’re going to work with all of our students who are drowning in debt to take the pressure off these people just starting out in their adult lives. Tremendous problem.’”

NBC News: “Trump also attempted to cut billions from the department’s budget that would have ended subsidized student loans and the public service loan forgiveness program.”

Politico: “[Trump’s] Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Friday finalized rules that make it more difficult for federal student loan borrowers to cancel their debt on the grounds that their college defrauded them, scaling back an Obama-era policy aimed at abuses by for-profit colleges.”

Politico: “Trump and DeVos fuel a for-profit college comeback”

New York Times: “A DeVos System Allowed 12 Minutes to Decide Student Loan Forgiveness”

“[Trump’s] former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos made no secret of her disdain for a program intended to forgive the federal student loans of borrowers who were ripped off by schools that defrauded their students. She called it a ‘free money’ giveaway, let hundreds of thousands of claims languish for years and slashed the amount of relief granted to some successful applicants to $0. … In Ms. DeVos’s final year in office, her agency denied nearly 130,000 claims — far surpassing the 9,000 rejections in the prior five years — with a system that pressured workers to speed through applications in a matter of minutes, according to internal Education Department documents filed in federal court.”