Student loan relief application now officially available through online portal
Portal had beta-testing period over the weekend
Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn reacts to the IRS going after the gig economy and President Biden's student loan handout on "Kudlow."
President Joe Biden on Monday officially unveiled the online application portal for his student loan forgiveness program.
The portal, available through the Federal Student Aid website, gives Americans access to an application that’s estimated to take about five minutes to complete and that does not require any supporting documents to be uploaded. It is available in both English and Spanish on mobile and desktop, Biden said Monday.
The portal "handled more than 8 million applications without a glitch or any difficulty" over the weekend during its testing period, the president claimed. The deadline to apply for debt relief is Dec. 31 of next year.
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"As millions of people fill out the application, we’re going to make sure the system continues to work as smoothly as possible so that we can deliver student loan relief for millions of Americans as quickly and as efficiently as possible," Biden said.
Joe Biden student loan handout (Reuters / Reuters Photos)
Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, first announced in August, seeks to cancel up to $20,000 in student loan debt for Pell Grant recipients and up to $10,000 for eligible federal non-Pell Grant borrowers. To qualify, individuals must have an adjusted gross income of less than $125,000, and married couples must have one of less than $250,000.
His plan could cost more than $400 billion, according to an estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
The cost of college has soared multiple times the rate of inflation over the past 50 years. (iStock / iStock)
In late September, the Biden administration updated its guidance so that borrowers with commercially held Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program loans or Perkins loans would no longer be able to qualify by consolidating them into direct loans, except if they applied to do so before Sept. 29. The eligibility change came amid a handful of states suing to pump the brakes on the rollout of Biden’s student loan handout plan.
"We are working on pathways there to support those, but we’re moving as quickly as possible to provide relief to as many people as possible," Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said Monday regarding the eligibility of people with privately held student loans.
President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the student debt relief portal beta test at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington on Oct. 17, 2022. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Approximately 42.8 million people have federal student loans as of the third quarter of fiscal year 2022, according to Education Department data.
The student loan forgiveness program comes as the U.S. national debt topped $31 trillion for the first time ever earlier in the month.
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It surpassed that record amount in the first week of October, with the federal government’s total public debt outstanding sitting at about $31.14 trillion as of Thursday. Approximately $24.28 trillion of that consists of debt held by the public, while $6.86 trillion is intragovernmental holdings, according to Treasury Department data.
The CBO warned in its latest long-term budget outlook that the rising debt could have ramifications for the U.S. economy.