Student loan relief: Where Biden's SAVE Plan stands now

Headlines about student loan changes pretty often this year and if you're a borrower it's hard to keep up. So let's go through what's happened so far for the Biden administration's broader student loan forgiveness programs. Now you've probably been seeing the administration's latest plan let's call it the cancel runaway interest plan in the news and it was introduced in April of this year. Now it would cancel up to twenty thousand dollars worth of accrued interest and aims to forgive outstanding balances for borrowers who started repaying their loans a decade ago. It was allowed to proceed then temporarily blocked then greenlit then temporarily blocked again last week sending it into legal limbo for the foreseeable future. Now there's another Biden administration initiative called the saving on a valuable education plan or the save plan. It's an affordable payment plan with some forgiveness attached to it. That plan was put on hold after a U.S. Court of Appeals prohibited the administration from implementing parts of the plan that were not already blocked by two lower court rulings. Basically that means it's still sitting in legal purgatory. Payments for those enrolled are in administrative forbearance and their interest rate is set at zero percent until it gets sorted out. And before these two sweeping rules there was a different student debt cancellation back in 2022. The administration instituted a one-time student loan debt cancellation for up to twenty thousand dollars for eligible borrowers who met specific income requirements. A bunch of states not happy about this. They sued and it went all the way to the Supreme Court the SCOTUS and in 2023 SCOTUS ruled against the administration and there's been even more student loan programs targeted towards specific groups. In light of all these changes though to break it all down you've got Elaine Rubin who is the advisor's director of corporate communications. Elaine great to have you here with us. Okay so make sense of this all for us. What is still in limbo and what have people been able to take advantage of to this juncture and is there more relief on the way? So essentially these plans are both bolted the safe plan and the broad forgiveness. Borrowers have been looking forward to some type of relief that has been promised in the Biden administration but he's been challenged every step of the way. The safe plan is that income driven repayment plan there are some other income driven repayment plan options out there but anyone in the safe plan like you said they're on hold right now and broad student loan forgiveness hasn't even had its final rules published and it's already been halted before that has even happened. And so what have heard about as this is also going to be perhaps one of the bigger talking points for political candidates going into the election and and has a broader economic implication as well because one would think at least in theory if some of the student loan forgiveness were to move forward were to take place that would have other benefits for people who are you know starting a family or if they want to purchase a house all of these other economic contributors as well. So what are we expecting and anticipating to hear? So in this election year we know that the Kamala administration they are aiming to continue some of the plans that the Biden administration has already started so defending the safe plan and going towards that broad forgiveness. The Trump administration has been relatively quiet on these specific plans however when it comes down to it there are some very significant platforms that he's running for in higher education including some of the platforms of eliminating different types of forgiveness options and potentially even eliminating the U.S. Department of Education. So that would be a completely different route than the Biden-Harris administration has taken. So for borrowers it's there's a lot up at stake at this election and there's a lot for them to consider when they it's time to vote. Okay so say you are paying down student debt right now I want to give people some actionable tips that they can use whether or not they are enrolled or trying to be enrolled or met the deadline for any of these plans. So the safe plan if you're already enrolled in the safe plan essentially when student loans re-entered repayment the first phase of the safe plan was implemented. So borrowers were enrolled and if they were in that repay income driven repayment plan they were automatically placed in the safe plan because that plan no longer exists. And these borrowers are in that zero percent administrative forbearance and no payments are due. However this time period doesn't initially doesn't automatically qualify you for public service loan forgiveness qualifying payment months or payments towards that income driven for income driven repayment forgiveness. These income driven plans do have forgiveness attached to them after several years of payments and under the same plan that's one of the items being contested in the court and in the litigation. So borrowers essentially should hang tight unless there's some reason they're really looking to switch out of that plan then they can complete an income driven repayment plan application and potentially switch or they can go to another student loan repayment plan that's not an income driven plan. Things like the standard 10-year plan but typically that's a more expensive monthly payment. So for the most part we're telling borrowers to hold tight unless there's a case by case reason that they need to be switching to another plan. Borrowers who are not in a plan and have been considering income driven repayment plans it doesn't mean that the safe plan can't be applied for and you can't enroll in the safe plan you can complete the applications but we are hearing that's going to take months for those applications to be processed.