MADRID, 22 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
A federal appeals court in the United States has temporarily blocked the student loan forgiveness program launched by the Biden Administration after six states led by the Republican Party have presented two appeals to the measure.
The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has ruled this Friday that the policy to cancel thousands of dollars in student loan debt “should be suspended” until the appeals filed by the Republicans are resolved in court, as reported by ‘The Hill’ .
Even so, the temporary order does not prevent borrowers from continuing to apply for student debt relief or stop reviewing applications so that they are ready once the blockade ends, as the House spokeswoman announced in a statement. White, Karine Jean-Pierre.
Biden’s plan proposes the cancellation of 10,000 dollars in the debt acquired by all those young people who earn less than 125,000 dollars a year. And, in the case of those who have received public aid to pursue higher education, the pardoned money amounts to $20,000, according to the White House.
The US Administration estimated that 45 million citizens have debts of this type, for a total of 1,600 million dollars. About 16 percent of these people do not have the resources to pay for them and this burden is especially heavy on traditionally vulnerable groups, such as the black community.
The US president, Joe Biden, announced this Friday that more than 22 million people have so far requested the forgiveness of student loan debt, according to the aforementioned newspaper.
However, the attorneys general of several Republican states filed their respective lawsuits in September requesting the cancellation of the measure, arguing that the Biden administration “does not have the authority to cancel the debt because Congress has not authorized it.”
But despite several attempts by the Republican Party to strike down the measure, the US government has argued that it is authorized to write off the debt through the Higher Education Student Relief Opportunities Act of 2003. The legislation allows that the Secretary of Education cancel the debt of student loan borrowers in times of “national emergency”.
“We will continue to move full speed ahead in our preparations in compliance with this order. The Administration will continue to fight Republican officials who are suing to block our efforts to provide relief to working families,” the White House spokeswoman said.
Biden’s intention to carry out the cancellation of the debt is to relieve the personal economy of the millions of Americans who have had to face two economic crises in a short period of time.
In addition, the US president’s approach is that the measure affects low-income people, who are the ones who are most likely to default on their loans. Specifically, the black community is the minority that would benefit the most from debt forgiveness.
