Headline Roundup • October 18th, 2022
Student Loan Relief Application Goes Live as Questions Remain
Economy And Jobs,Student Loans,Education,Department Of Education,Banking And Finance,Debt,Politics,Technology,Joe Biden
Summary from the AllSides News Team
The Department of Education released its student debt relief application Monday, as questions about legality and fairness linger.
For Context: President Joe Biden’s plan would forgive $10,000 for most student loan borrowers making less than $125,000 per year. However, the program is still in legal limbo due to multiple Republican-led lawsuits.
How the Left Covered It: Voices from the left generally favored the debt relief program. Coverage tended to focus on borrowers who would benefit from debt relief; one CBS News (Lean Left bias) analysis article highlighted a former student who said he was “working four jobs” to pay off his loans. Some coverage focused on GOP efforts to stop the program.
How the Right Covered It: Voices from the right were generally opposed to the plan, often focusing on its cost, which some said would cause “considerable economic harm.” Some coverage discussed the lawsuits without framing them as being led by conservative or Republican groups. Fox News (Right bias) repeatedly called the program a “handout” in headlines. Updated 10/17/22 at 4:30 p.m. ET with the application formally going live.
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Borrowers anxiously awaiting the federal student loan relief application say the beta version that was released this weekend couldn’t have been simpler.
“It was a real quick and easy process,” says Glenn Gallimore, a 42-year-old living in Arizona with just over $21,000 in student loans left to repay. He estimates it took about two minutes to fill out.
The Biden administration released a test version of its long-awaited federal student loan forgiveness application Friday night. It requires a borrower’s full name, date of birth, Social Security number, and attestation that...
Photo by Craig Hudson for The Washington Post via Getty Images
Student-loan borrowers can now officially apply for President Joe Biden's one-time debt relief.
On Monday, Biden announced that the site to apply for student-loan forgiveness is officially live, following a beta test of the website conducted over the weekend. This means that the Education Department will begin processing applications as borrowers apply for up to $20,000 in debt relief through a form on studentaid.gov that requires just basic information, like a borrower's name, email address, and Social Security number.
"It landed and handled more than 8 million applications without a glitch or any difficulty,"...
Illustration: Lex Villena; Jim LoScalzo Pool via CNP picture alliance Consolidated News Photos Newscom
While the incredible costs of the Biden administration's federal student loan forgiveness plan are widely known, yet another expense of the program is stirring controversy: maintaining the online application for loan forgiveness is expected to cost nearly $100 million annually.
This latest expense—not included in the Congressional Budget Office's recent estimate of the program's cost to taxpayers—is yet more evidence that sweeping student loan forgiveness will end up doing considerable economic harm.
In August, President Joe Biden announced a sweeping federal student loan forgiveness plan. Under the proposal, most borrowers making under $125,000 annually and married...
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