Student Loan Debt Relief

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, there has been a controversy going on the last several years which has really been to the detriment of many good people.

In 2007, Congress made a promise to college students. Here is what we said 14 years ago: If you will give us 10 years of life in public service and you make your student loan payments during that 10-year period of time, at the end of it, America will forgive the remainder of your student debt.

We said that, and more than a million people took us up on the promise. They passed up perhaps higher salaries in more lucrative professions in order to serve the country. Then they discovered at the end of the 10-year period that the loan forgiveness they were promised wasn't coming. Nearly 99 percent of those who applied under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program were denied relief, often for superficial clerical errors, loan servicing mistakes, or other matters beyond their control.

Well, good news: Those days of broken promises are over. Yesterday, the Biden administration announced important changes to this program to help hundreds of thousands of borrowers finally get the relief we promised over 10 years ago. The Education Department estimates the changes will immediately erase the debt of 22,000 borrowers, more than the total number of loans that have been forgiven so far under the program. All told, more than 550,000 borrowers could see a reduction in the amount of additional time they make in payments.

Servicemembers whose loans were deferred while they were on Active Duty will have those periods of duty applied towards payments, as they should be. This is good news, and it is long overdue.

Many of my Democratic colleagues and I tried for 4 years during the Trump administration to fix this program. They ignored us. So I want to thank President Biden and Education Secretary Cardona for following through on their commitment to fix this important program and recognize the essential work of these public servants who sacrifice for this country and for the people who live here and should receive what we promised--helping hands on their student loans.

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