Student loan forgiveness: Administration cancels $6 billion in debt for public service workers

The White House announced Thursday that the student debt for more than 78,000 public service workers has been canceled.

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The debt canceled comes to nearly $6 billion, according to the White House, and affects 78,000 eligible public service workers including teachers, nurses and firefighters.

“From day one of my Administration, I promised to fix broken student loan programs and make sure higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity,” Biden said in a statement.

“I won’t back down from using every tool at my disposal to deliver student debt relief to more Americans, and build an economy from the middle out and bottom up.”

The cancellation is part of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. The program allows certain public-sector employees to have their remaining debt forgiven after they have made 10 years’ worth of payments, or if they “have been in repayment for at least 20 years — but didn’t accurately get credit for student loan payment,” the White House said in a statement.

In January, the Biden administration canceled $5 billion in debt for 74,000 borrowers under the program. Many of those borrowers worked in public sector jobs for more than a decade, the administration said.

The White House also announced that it would be emailing around 380,000 more borrowers to inform them that they are on track to have student debt canceled within two years under the PSLF program.

According to the Department of Education, the email from Biden will thank them for their service and notify them that if they continue in their public service work, they will be eligible for student loan forgiveness within 24 months.

The Biden administration has approved nearly $144 billion in federal loan forgiveness for nearly 4 million borrowers in total, according to the administration.

In addition to the announcement of loan forgiveness, the administration included a breakdown by state of borrowers who have been approved for forgiveness under PSLF.

In Georgia, for instance, 35,810 borrowers have received debt forgiveness under PSLF. In Florida, the number is 48,550.

Ohio has seen 38,310 of its citizens have debts erased under PSLF, while Pennsylvania has seen nearly the exact number — 38,320 are now student loan debt-free.

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that Biden’s more far-reaching student loan debt relief plan was not legal because Congress did not explicitly approve the move.

Since then, Biden has introduced several plans to help ease or erase the burden of $1.60 trillion in outstanding federally backed student debt.

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