Millions of Americans applied for the student loan debt forgiveness program once applications went live. Now, nobody knows for sure if that plan will be able to move forward.
This means that payments are set to resume in January and people should plan to pay them even if you expected to be fully forgiven.
This is due to multiple lawsuits filed against the program created by the Biden Administration. Most recently a federal judge in Texas struck the plan down, which would forgive up to $20,000 in debt for student loan borrowers. That isn’t the only lawsuit at play, and many of them are going against the plan effectively halting it.
The Department of Education is working hard to overturn the ruling, but there isn’t a guarantee it will happen according to Local Syracuse.
The only way payments wouldn’t resume is if President Biden extended the forbearance, but nobody has hinted at that happening. The current deadline is up on January 1, 2023. The original deadline has been extended multiple times since 2020. During the appeal, the Department of Education Under Secretary James Kvaal hinted at it being a possibility. He stated that an extension on the current forbearance could be a consequence of the judge’s ruling in Texas.
For now the applications have been taken down. 16 million applications have already been approved while 26 million have applied in all.
FingerLakes1.com is the region’s leading all-digital news publication. The company was founded in 1998 and has been keeping residents informed for more than two decades. Have a lead? Send it to [email protected]