Gabriel T. Rubin and Rosie Ettenheim:
More than three million borrowers have had $132 billion of their federal student loans flagged for cancellation, despite a Supreme Court ruling in June that blocked relief for millions more student-loan holders.
The high court ruled that the Biden administration couldn’t cancel hundreds of billions of dollars for tens millions of student-loan holders, reasoning that the authority for such a broad-based policy doesn’t exist under the law. While that closed one path, Biden tapped a variety of different tools that no previous president had ever used to this extent.
The administration announced its latest round of cancelations on Dec. 6, forgiving about $5 billion in loans for roughly 80,000 borrowers. Since taking office in 2021, the Biden administration has arranged to cancel loans equal to around 30% of the total projected cost of its blocked mass cancellation plan. Here’s how: