Just a week after erroneously suggesting he got student loan debt forgiveness passed by a vote or two, President Joe Biden, 79, said the checks will be going out in the next two weeks.
A federal appeals court ruled last Friday that the Biden administration's executive fiat to pay off up to $20,000 of an individual's student loan debt would be halted amid a lawsuit by six Republican state attorneys general.
That lawsuit will move forward while the student loan forgiveness action will not — although Biden says otherwise.
"We're gonna win that case," Biden told a reporter Thursday in Syracuse, New York. "I think in the next two weeks you're going to see those checks going out."
The Department of Education will provide up to $20,000 in debt cancellation to Pell Grant recipients with loans held by the Department of Education, and up to $10,000 in debt cancellation to non-Pell Grant recipients. Borrowers are eligible for this relief if their individual income is less than $125,000 ($250,000 for married couples).
The move was planned to go in effect Jan. 1, 2023, because the COVID-19 pandemic pause on repaying student loan debt was extended one final time through Dec. 31, 2022.
Last week, before the program was halted by the court ruling, the administration said 22 million Americans had applied for up to $20,000 in a student loan debt bailout.
"At a time when people are dealing with a pandemic and at the time that he's — as you know, late this year, he's going to lift the pause, he wanted to make sure that the American people, as he says, has a little bit of a breathing room," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Thursday.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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