news Court defends Biden's IDR correction, activists urge admin to discharge loans ASAP

[Communion]

 

[Onyxmage]

Im so happy for anyone who is getting their loans discharged. This will literally change their lives for the better. The GOP filing lawsuit after lawsuit just to hurt struggling Americans makes me so angry.

 

[Cesar]

1 hour ago, Onyxmage said:

Im so happy for anyone who is getting their loans discharged. This will literally change their lives for the better. The GOP filing lawsuit after lawsuit just to hurt struggling Americans makes me so angry.

 

that's the "party for the people"  for you 

[GhostBox]

Good on the Biden admin for sticking to this issue and trying their best despite the gops constant antics  👏🏼👏🏼

[Sannie]

Reading the posts on r/studentloans has me smiling ear to ear. So many people who have been paying for decades are waking up each morning to tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt wiped away. I can not imagine the feeling of relief these people are feeling.  I just wish this was the case for everyone suffering. 

[If U Seek Amy]

And the GOP wonders why they are so out of touch with younger voters who are soon to dominate elections. Like this is one of your priorities? Up there with abortion and LGBT rights? No wonder they are getting slaughtered in most of these off year elections. Even if you don't have student debt most young people understand how messed our system is and support their discharge. For some reason they cannot grasp that we aren't growing up in the economic system they grew up in and it is ruining our country

[Communion]

 

[justjess]

Wait. So what's the criteria for this? You've had to have paid loans for decades? I really only paid mine for 3 before the pause happened.

[Communion]

17 minutes ago, justjess said:

Wait. So what's the criteria for this? You've had to have paid loans for decades? I really only paid mine for 3 before the pause happened.

Basically:

IDR - Income-Driven Repayment where your loans are forgiven after 20 or 25 years of lowered, tied-to-income payments for those below a certain income (in the past you'd have to pay taxes on the amount forgiven unlike PSLF but all taxes related to student debt were waived until sometime in 2024, I believe, during the pandemic)

PSLF - Public Service Loan Forgiveness where your loans are forgiven after 10 years of continued payments while working for a government or non-profit entity

 

So loan processors were keeping horrific records for people on IDR, and the Department of Education wasn't ensuring that this data was being kept properly or that people who met this mark got their loans forgiven.

 

Amongst calls for student loan forgiveness, the admin was threatened with lawsuits and decided :

• to do a one-time IDR count adjustment for those who had evidence they've been making payments;
• count all 42 or so months of the student debt pause as months counting to IDR for those who qualified;
• hold an adjustment process for those who now qualified but did not under previous terms for IDR (and possibly I believe those who qualified during the time yet under previous standards got denied)

Similar is happening with the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program

 

I believe there was some study around 2016 that saw only 32 (!) people ever completed their IDR.

 

With this one-time correction, those who hit 20 or 25 years are being notified first and about 800k people are now being added to that total (many of whom who should have had their loans forgiven already).

 

The Dept of Ed say it should have updated totals for those on IDR by early 2024 with the amount of months on record.

 

(I believe I read but encourage further research that those whose TOTAL loan balance was under $10k would qualify for forgiveness if they, with everything, had achieved 10 years/120 months of payments under IDR. I've always been in either economic deferment or IDR and have been for about 105 months but sadly my original loan total was $41k and think my arrangement now under SAVE is 240 months so I'll be with these for another decade )