Congressional Republicans demand student debt solutions
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Friday ruling striking down the Biden administration’s student loan debt cancellation plan, Republicans are moving forward with their own proposed solution.
Conservative lawmakers from both chambers, vocally opposed to the president’s landmark program, which they said was an overreach, celebrated the court’s decision.
Even with the 6-3 ruling against him, President Joe Biden on Friday laid out alternative options to his original call for sweeping debt forgiveness, though some specific details remain unclear.
«I’m announcing today a new path consistent with today’s ruling to provide student debt relief to as many borrowers as possible as quickly as possible,» he said. «We will ground this new approach in a different law than my original plan, the so-called Higher Education Act, that will allow [Education] Secretary [Miguel] Cardona … to compromise, waive or release loans under certain circumstances.»
An on-ramp to repayment will begin later this fall, according to Biden. It will include a 12-month grace period after the pause unfreezes in September.
Federal student loan borrowers should expect interest on their debts to kick back in on Sept. 1 and payments to resume starting in October, the government has said. Repayments had been paused for more than three years amid disruptions from COVID-19.
Below is a look at how GOP legislators would address the same issue.Meeting with the secretary?
Recently, Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, the ranking member of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee, and House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx of North Carolina requested to meet with Cardona on or before July 20 to discuss federal student aid servicer roadblocks as well as internal memos and documents about the department’s strategy for the return to repayment.
