US President Joe Biden announced Wednesday, August 24, a partial cancellation of student loans, a question that is generating heated debate in a country where a year at university can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
“As per my campaign promise, my administration is announcing a plan to give working-class and middle-class families a break as they prepare to resume federal student loan repayments in January 2023.”tweeted Joe Biden, promising details in the afternoon.
The measure, announced less than three months before the midterm elections, affects people earning less than $125,000 a year, according to an illustration accompanying the president’s tweet.
“A giant step”
It will be a question of erasing 10,000 dollars for people who have not benefited from a federal scholarship to pay the costs related to their university studies, and 20,000 dollars for those, with more modest means, having received a . The plan was announced after months of reflection at the White House on this issue, which has also been a headache for previous administrations. The executive was particularly concerned about the possibility that the measure would fuel already galloping inflation.
Democratic Senators Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren praised in a joint statement “a giant step towards resolving the student debt crisis”. The leader of the Republican Party, Ronna McDaniel, on the contrary judged that this measure “unfairly punished Americans who saved up for college or made a different career choice”.
Average debt of $25,000
American universities can charge anywhere from $10,000 to $70,000 a year, and many students begin their working lives with heavy debt. According to government estimates, the average US student debt when they graduate is $25,000, a sum that many take years or even decades to pay off.
In total, some 45 million borrowers in the country collectively owe $1.6 trillion, according to the White House. Joe Biden also announced that a moratorium on the repayment of student loans, introduced during the Covid pandemic, would be extended until the end of the year.