The Biden administration has proposed another student debt relief plan for eight million people who cannot repay their loans because of “financially devastating hardships,” Miguel A. Cardona, the secretary of education, said on Friday.
The proposal, which will almost certainly face legal challenges, builds on the administration’s strategy of finding new ways to reduce student loan debt after the Supreme Court last year rejected a far more ambitious, $400 billion plan for as many as 45 million borrowers.
Under the proposed regulation, the secretary of education would be authorized to cancel federal student loans in cases where the Education Department determined “a hardship is likely to impair the borrower’s ability to fully repay the loan or render the costs of continued collection of the loan unjustified.”
Such a hardship could include things like surprise medical bills, burdensome child care or elder care costs and financial losses from a natural disaster, the department said.
“For far too long, our broken student loan system has made it too hard for borrowers experiencing heartbreaking and financially devastating hardships to access relief, and it’s not right,” Mr. Cardona said in a statement.
While the Biden administration has approached student debt as a national economic problem for the country and tried to achieve major cancellation through a variety of targeted programs this year, legal challenges brought by Republican states have repeatedly succeeded in blocking the plans, arguing that they exceed the Education Department’s authority under the law.
