Savannah Britt owes about $27,000 on loans she took out to attend Rutgers University, a debt she was hoping to see reduced by President Joe Biden’s student loan-forgiveness efforts.
Her payments are currently on hold while courts untangle challenges to the loan-forgiveness program. But as the weeks tick down on Biden’s time in office, she could soon face a monthly payment of up to $250.
“With this new administration, the dream is gone. It’s shot,” said Britt, 30, who runs her own communications agency. “I was hopeful before Tuesday. I was waiting out the process. Even my mom has a loan that she took out to support me. She owes about $18,000, and she was in the process of it being forgiven, but it’s at a standstill.”
President-elect Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans have criticized Biden’s loan-forgiveness efforts, and lawsuits by GOP-led states have held up plans for widespread debt cancellation. Trump has not said what he would do on loan forgiveness, leaving millions of borrowers facing uncertainty over their personal finances.
The economy was an important issue in the election, helping to propel Trump. But for borrowers, concerns about their finances extend beyond inflation to include their student debt, said Persis Yu, managing counsel for the Student Borrower Protection Center.
“A big part of what is making life unaffordable for them is this burden of expenses that they can’t seem to get out from under,” Yu said.
Student loan cancellation was not a focus of the campaign for either Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris, who steered clear of the issue at her political events. The issue came up just once in the September presidential debate, when Trump hammered Harris and Biden for failing to deliver their promise of widespread forgiveness. Trump called it a “total catastrophe” that “taunted young people.”
Biden promised the student loan-cancellation program during his run for the presidency. From its launch, it faced relentless pushback from opponents who said it heaped advantage on elites and came at the expense of those who repaid their loans or did not attend college.
Biden’s first plan to cancel up to $20,000 for millions of people was blocked by the Supreme Court last year. A second, narrower plan has been halted by a federal judge after Republican-led states sued. A separate policy intended to lower loan payments for struggling borrowers has been paused by a judge, also after Republican-controlled states challenged it.
Bob Eitel, who served during the first Trump administration as a senior counselor to the education secretary, said he expects the president-elect will move to rescind the loan-cancellation regulations.
“The Trump administration may pursue different avenues of loan relief, but it will not be the mass, blanket types of forgiveness that the current administration has pursued,” said Eitel, president and co-founder of the Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies.
