Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the Biden Administration “misled borrowers” when it canceled student loans.
Biden reportedly ‘canceled’ $136.6 billion in student loans – and forced average wage earners to pay for other people’s student loans.
“American taxpayers will no longer be forced to serve as collateral for irresponsible student loan policies,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon wrote in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal on Monday.
The Department of Education will begin collecting payments on defaulted student loans on May 5.
The new policy will impact an estimated 5 million borrowers who have not made any monthly payments since March 2020.
Federal student loan payments were halted in March 2020 because of the Covid pandemic. Payments were set to resume in October 2023, but millions of borrowers are still in default.
“The Biden Administration misled borrowers: the executive branch does not have the constitutional authority to wipe debt away, nor do the loan balances simply disappear. Hundreds of billions have already been transferred to taxpayers. Going forward, the Department of Education, in conjunction with the Department of Treasury, will shepherd the student loan program responsibly and according to the law, which means helping borrowers return to repayment—both for the sake of their own financial health and our nation’s economic outlook,” McMahon said.
The Biden Administration misled student borrowers about loan forgiveness.
Starting May 5, the Department is ending the Biden-era practice of zero-interest and zero-accountability for student borrowers. https://t.co/xF3y1Icky4
— Secretary Linda McMahon (@EDSecMcMahon) April 21, 2025
Biden used a series of workarounds to circumvent the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down his student loan bailout program.
Joe Biden unilaterally announced a massive forgiveness of student loans in August 2022 to buy the Gen Z-Millennial vote in the 2022 midterms.
Biden canceled over $400 billion in student loans which turned out to be up to $10,000 in student debt for borrowers who earn $125,000 a year or less and up to $20,000 for recipients of Pell Grants.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 against Joe Biden’s student loan relief program so the Department of Education rolled out a workaround forbearance program to cancel $39 billion in student loans by counting non-payments as payments for a period of time.
Only it wasn’t your typical forbearance program. Borrowers didn’t have to pay back ‘missed’ payments or make up the difference of ‘reduced’ payments. No interest was accrued on any of the missed payments.
In his last year in office, Biden announced a flurry of student loan cancellation programs.
In January 2024, Biden unilaterally canceled another $5 billion in student loan debt for 74,000 borrowers and announced he would cancel student loans for borrowers who took out less than $12,000 and have been in repayment for 10 years.
