Following President Biden’s latest announcement of new actions to reduce and eliminate student loan debt for millions of Americans, DNC Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd released the following statement: 

“Today, President Biden is again delivering on his promise to help hardworking Americans by fixing the broken student loan system and making college more affordable — all while Trump continues to rail against life-changing relief. President Biden has already canceled more student debt than any president in history, growing the economy from the bottom up and middle out even as Trump and his MAGA allies stand in the way. Trump won’t put students and families first, and voters will remember who is on their side come November.”

NEW: President Biden announced new plans to reduce and eliminate student loan debt for tens of millions of hardworking Americans.

HuffPost: “President Biden To Cancel Student Debt For Millions More Americans”

“Combined with prior measures, Biden’s plans mean he will have reduced student debt for 30 million people. … Overall, due to this newest set of changes, the Biden administration estimates that more than 10 million people would get over $5,000 in debt forgiven, including 4 million people who would have their outstanding debts entirely forgiven.”

Washington Post: “Biden’s proposed student debt relief plan could help more than 30 million”

CNBC: “Biden administration will soon roll out a sweeping new student loan forgiveness plan”

“Almost half of all voters, or 48%, say canceling student loan debt is an important issue to them in the 2024 presidential and congressional elections, a recent survey found.”

Wall Street Journal: “The Biden administration is poised to issue a proposal aimed at reducing or eliminating student loan balances for millions of borrowers… Biden is planning to outline the broad strokes of the new proposal during a speech on Monday in Madison, Wis., where he is expected to tout his administration’s wide-ranging efforts to chip away at the student debt burden facing more than 40 million Americans.”

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

CNN: “About 4 million people have seen their federal student debt canceled under Biden, totaling about $144 billion.”

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

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

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

President Biden’s plans would address the disproportionate debt burden on Black and Latino borrowers  and other vulnerable borrowers.

USA Today: “Student debt relief blocked, potentially hurting Black and Latino families the most”

CNBC: “In October, when the Biden administration turns the $1.7 trillion federal student loan system — dormant for more than three years — back on, millions of people are expected to struggle financially. But the problems may be especially severe and long-lasting among Latino borrowers, who tend to earn less than non-Hispanic whites and fall behind on their loans at a higher rate, consumer advocates say.”

Forbes: “How Biden Forgiving Another $9 Billion In Student Loan Debt Helps 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.”