President Joe Biden on Friday is traveling to his home state of Delaware to highlight the launch of his student loan forgiveness program at a historically Black university – one day after two courts rejected challenges to the plan.
Biden will speak at Delaware State University, where more than 75% of students received a Pell grant to pay for tuition, according to a White House official. The president’s plan will provide up to $20,000 in forgiveness for borrowers who received the grants for school.
Biden kicked off the program Monday by announcing the application opening for debt relief. Borrowers qualify for up to $10,000 in forgiveness if they made less than $125,000 per year in 2020 or 2021, or up to $20,000 for Pell grant recipients.
On Thursday, a federal judge dismissed an effort by six Republican-led states to block the plan, hours after Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett rejected an appeal in another case brought by a Wisconsin taxpayers group.
Biden on Friday is expected to depict debt relief as “life-changing” for millions of working and middle-class Americans, especially borrowers of color, a White House official said.
And he’s expected to renew criticisms of Republicans who have sharply attacked the student loan relief plan as costly and unfair, painting some of them as hypocritical for having gotten pandemic relief loans forgiven.
He’ll also speak about why historically Black colleges and universities are critical and the efforts his administration is taking to strengthen them — including by more broadly working on fixes to the student loan system in an effort to make college more affordable.
Of the approximate 40 million Americans who are eligible for student loan relief, more than 60% are Pell grant recipients.
Plus, 71% of Black borrowers are Pell recipients, along with 65% of Latino borrowers.
The Biden administration has pointed to the fact that 90% of relief will go to Americans making less than $75,000 per year.
Republicans, meanwhile, have pointed to the cost of the plan, which is expected to cost $400 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
“He’s wanting to give [relief] to those who went to Ivy League schools and have high dollar degrees,” Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, who is leading GOP states’ challenge to Biden’s program, said in an interview with Fox News earlier this month.
“Putting that debt on the backs of hardworking Americans — and our plumbers and mechanics, machinists and nurses and teachers — and so this is against the law … and it’s patently unfair,” she said.
The Biden administration officially opened a simple online portal for Americans to see if they qualify for student loan debt relief Monday.
Officials have encouraged people to apply by mid-November to get relief before payments and interest restart on Jan. 1.
