Biden Approves $136 Billion in Targeted Student Debt Relief - 3.7 Million Borrowers Through Alternative Programs

Despite the Supreme Court striking down Biden’s broad student loan forgiveness plan in June 2023, the administration reported on February 12, 2024, that it had approved $136.6 billion in targeted student debt relief for 3.7 million borrowers through existing programs—demonstrating that systematic debt relief was possible within current legal authority even without the blocked $10,000-$20,000 cancellation plan. The relief came through Public Service Loan Forgiveness fixes ($56 billion for 790,000 public servants), Borrower Defense to Repayment discharges ($22.5 billion for 1.3 million defrauded borrowers), Total and Permanent Disability discharges ($11.7 billion for 510,000 disabled borrowers), and income-driven repayment corrections.

The $136 billion in approved relief represented more than Biden’s critics claimed was possible, but still reached only a fraction of the 43 million borrowers who would have benefited from the blocked forgiveness plan. The targeted approach required borrowers to navigate complex application processes, prove eligibility through specific programs, and often wait years for approval—barriers that excluded millions who needed relief but didn’t qualify for or couldn’t access targeted programs. The relief disproportionately went to specific groups (public servants, defrauded students, disabled borrowers) rather than providing broad-based relief for all borrowers crushed by debt.

Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) relief was particularly significant: the Biden administration fixed a program that had been deliberately sabotaged during the Trump/DeVos era, when 99% of PSLF applications were denied through bureaucratic obstacles and servicer errors. The Biden Education Department implemented temporary waivers allowing past periods of repayment to count toward PSLF forgiveness, correcting years of servicer fraud and administrative failures that had denied relief to teachers, nurses, social workers, and other public servants who had made qualifying payments.

Borrower Defense to Repayment discharges focused on students defrauded by for-profit colleges including Corinthian Colleges, ITT Tech, and others. This represented a reversal of DeVos’s obstruction: where DeVos froze relief, denied claims, and was held in contempt for illegal collections, the Biden administration processed claims and provided full discharges. However, the process remained slow and many defrauded borrowers waited years for relief while facing collections and defaults.

By the end of the Biden administration, total relief grew to $188.8 billion for 5.3 million borrowers—a substantial achievement but representing only about 11% of the $1.6+ trillion in total student debt and reaching only 12% of the 44 million borrowers. The targeted relief approach demonstrated both the possibility and limitations of executive action: Biden could provide significant relief within existing programs, but comprehensive debt cancellation required either Congressional action (unlikely given Republican opposition) or broader executive authority that the Supreme Court had blocked. The contrast between broad relief (struck down) and targeted relief (permitted) showed how the captured judiciary preserved the predatory debt system’s core while allowing limited fixes at the margins.