Kilili urges constituents to know options in student debt cancellations
With President Joe Biden’s cancellation this week of another $5.8 billion in student loans for an additional 78,000 public service workers, including teachers, nurses, and firefighters, Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (D-MP) is encouraging his constituents in the CNMI to learn more about two options for student debt cancellation.
Sablan said in his e-kilili newsletter over the weekend that income-driven repayments can be as low as $0 per month and the balance of the debt can be cancelled in 20 years—or as few as 10 years for some borrowers who have already been making payments for a decade.
Under the second option, if the borrower has served as a teacher, firefighter, government employee, or any other category of public service for 10 years, he or she may be eligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.
Sablan asked borrowers to visit StudentAid.gov/IDR and StudentAid.gov/PSLF for more information about the first and second option, respectively.
Biden said in his statement that these public service workers have dedicated their careers to serving their communities, but because of past administrative failures, never got the relief they were entitled to under the law.
The President said from Day 1 of his administration, he promised to fix broken student loan programs and make sure higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity.
“I won’t back down from using every tool at my disposal to deliver student debt relief to more Americans, and build an economy from the middle out and bottom up,” Biden said.
Sablan said Biden’s initial effort at student debt relief in 2022 was blocked by Republican appointees on the U.S. Supreme Court in a case brought by Republican state attorneys general.
The delegate said Biden persisted, however, and has now used the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program to forgive $62.5 billion to more than 871,000 government employees and non-profit workers.
In addition, Sablan said, 1.3 million individuals who took out federal loans to pay for fraudulent for-profit colleges received $22.5 billion in debt relief, and 513,000 Americans with disabilities had a total of $11.7 billion in debt canceled.
He said Biden also instituted an income-driven repayment plan that cuts payments on undergraduate loans in half, saving $45.6 billion for some 930,000 borrowers.
In all, Sablan said, Biden’s student loan efforts have canceled $144 billion in debt for over 4 million students.
Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan
