By SEUNG MIN KIM and COLLIN BINKLEY (Associated Press)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is set to announce his latest effort to expand student loan relief next week for new groups of borrowers, according to three people familiar with the plans. This comes almost a year after the Supreme Court blocked his first attempt to cancel debt for millions of college attendees.
Biden will present the plan on Monday in Madison, Wisconsin, where the main campus of the University of Wisconsin is located. The specific federal regulations outlining who would qualify for reduced or eliminated student loan debt are not expected to be released at that time, said the anonymous sources.
Many of the details that Biden will discuss on Monday have already been communicated through a negotiated rulemaking process at the Department of Education. This process has been ongoing for months to work out the new groups of borrowers. After the Supreme Court decision, the president announced that Education Secretary Miguel Cardona would undertake this process, as he has the power under the Higher Education Act to waive or compromise student loan debt in specific cases.
Still, the effort aims to fulfill Biden’s promise after the Supreme Court rejected his initial plan in June. This $400 billion proposal aimed to cancel or reduce federal student loan debt, but a majority of justices said it required congressional approval. Biden criticized that decision as a “mistake” and “wrong.”
The new announcement on student loan relief, which is important to younger voters, could help reinvigorate parts of Biden’s political coalition that have become disenchanted with his job performance. These are people whose support the president will need to defeat presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump this year.
The plan that Biden will detail aims to expand federal student loan relief to specific new categories of borrowers through the Higher Education Act, a move that administration officials believe puts it on a stronger legal footing than the broad proposal that was rejected by a 6-3 court majority last year. The Wall Street Journal first reported on Biden's planned announcement.
“This new approach is legally sound,” Biden stated in June. “It will take longer, but, in my view, it’s the best approach remaining to provide relief for as many borrowers as possible.”
Biden’s latest attempt to cancel