Student Loan Forgiveness: White House Responds to Outraged GOP Senators

The White House on Friday pushed back against some Republican senators who expressed outrage at President Joe Biden's new student loan relief program.

At the end of June, the Supreme Court struck down the Biden administration's previously proposed relief program, arguing that the White House had overstepped its authority. The plan, introduced last fall, would have eliminated $10,000 for all borrowers earning below certain income thresholds, or $20,000 for those who had received income-based Pell Grants. The plan was the culmination of Biden's campaign trail promise to address the looming student debt crisis, an issue of great interest to younger voters.

In the wake of the Court's decision, the Biden administration devised a new plan based on existing regulatory authority. Under this forgiveness plan, borrowers who are still repaying their loans after 20 years, roughly 804,000 individuals, will see their outstanding debt forgiven completely. While this plan is expected to impact a much narrower portion of borrowers, it is also predicted that it will wipe out $39 billion in outstanding student debt.

Student debt forgiveness plans of all kinds have long received strong pushback from Republicans, and within the last week, Senate Republicans like Rick Scott of Florida and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee expressed outrage on social media over Biden's new plan. In response, the official White House Twitter account pushed back, noting how many of each senator's constituents will be impacted by the plan.

"Joe Biden's student loan debt transfer will cost hardworking Americans as much as $558.8 BILLION!" Scott's official Twitter account tweeted on Monday evening. "That's money he is taking from your wallet to bailout other people's debt. It's totally unfair, and it won't fix the issue."

In response, the White House's Twitter account wrote: "It's unfortunate to see Senators who don't want their constituents to get automatic student loan relief: 56,930 of Senator Scott's constituents are eligible for automatic loan relief under this Administration's fixes to the Income-Driven Repayment plan."

Scott's tweet cited a story from the conservative news outlet, The Daily Caller, which reported on an estimate from the Penn Wharton Budget Model that put the potential cost of the new plan at over $550 billion over the next decade, or around $55 billion a year. The Department of Education's (DOE) own estimate, meanwhile, was much lower, totaling only $156 billion over the next decade, according to Politico.

In her own tweet last Friday, Blackburn accused the Biden administration's forgiveness plan of showing "no respect to our institutions," even though the new plan operates differently to the one struck down by the Supreme Court by utilizing other established authorities.

The official White House account responded to the Republican senator, stating that "16,970 of Senator Blackburn's constituents are eligible for automatic loan relief under this Administration's fixes to the Income-Driven Repayment plan."

Newsweek reached out to the White House via email for comment.