The Education Department (ED) is discharging $5.8 billion in student debt held by over 323,000 federal student loan borrowers who are totally and permanently disabled in a win for advocates who urged the Biden administration to make the move.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told reporters that the move was "in alignment with our strategies from day one to put our borrowers at the center of the conversation," adding that ED is looking to make more improvements in this type of targeted loan relief program such Public Service Loan Forgiveness and regarding a massive backlog of borrower defense applications for debt relief.
Alex Elson, senior counsel at the National Student Legal Defense Network, which was among the groups that has been pushing ED to forgive the loans, told Yahoo Finance that the latest action was "a life-changing announcement for hundreds of thousands of people, and it's precisely what we've been calling on the department to do for a long time now."
Catie Walsh, who was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, walks across a field to receive her diploma on 6/7/2017 (Photo By Natalie Kolb/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images)
The action affecting borrowers who have a total and permanent disability (TPD) brings total student loan forgiveness enacted by the Biden administration to roughly $8.7 billion. Federal actions amid the pandemic will lead to roughly $100 billion in total student loan forgiveness between March 2020 and September 2021, according to Education Department (ED) data and analysis from experts.