Biden Forgives Some Student Debt, As The Memers Rejoice And Criticize

August 24th, 2022 - 6:43 PM EDT by Aidan Walker

37 comments | Contact Newsroom

Joe Biden next to a tweet commenting on the debt forgiveness.

President Biden announced a student loan debt forgiveness on Wednesday, eliminating at least $10,000 of debt for all borrowers and $20,000 for those who took out a Pell Grant to pursue their education.


The total amount of debt canceled is around $300 billion out of $1.6 trillion owed in student loan debt by Americans. The forgiveness is also accompanied by new rules governing the repayment of debt.

For those who borrow less than $12,000, all will be forgiven in 10 years (not 20, like it used to be) and monthly payments will be capped at 5 percent of income. The pause on pandemic payments is also extended to January 1st, 2023 (although the government says this will be the last pause).


The move comes after months of deliberation by the Biden administration and directly ahead of the 2022 midterms.


The response across social media has already been massive, as meme-makers online rejoiced with an influx of student loan forgiveness memes.


Others were less enthusiastic, wishing Biden and his administration had taken more action. Other Democrats have been pressuring the President to forgive all debt, or at least a larger amount of it. Some feared that forgiving more debt would increase inflation, but by considerably less than the Federal Reserve bailouts of Wall Street and major companies during the COVID-19 pandemic did.


For about 8 million borrowers, the forgiveness will kick in automatically. For those whom the government doesn’t have a lot of information on, the administration will launch an application in the next few weeks and you can sign up for the email notification when that happens here.



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HomogenousSmoothie
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HomogenousSmoothie

in reply to Spaztastic Man

There's a lot more bundled with the announcement that is genuinely very helpful past this point:

for income based repayment plans, your contribution per month is capped at 5% of discretionary income, down from 10%

if you pay your plan for 120 months, and have less than 12k debt at the end of it, the loan is forgiven

if your income is below 225% FPL, then your minimum payment per month is $0.For those curious, this is about 27k for a single person.

As long as you make the minimum payments every month, your loan will not accrue interest. This is a big change that can help debtors actually pay off the principal.

Trust me, there was a good chunk of thought put into this, more than just a casual shave off of $10k. It is not comprehensive restructuring of tuition, but to a lot of people like me who grew up poor it is a huge deal.

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