WASHINGTON–The U.S. Department of Education said it is discharging $5.8 billion in student debt held by more than 323,000 federal student loan borrowers who are totally and permanently disabled.
The move is "in alignment with our strategies from day one to put our borrowers at the center of the conversation," said Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, adding the department is also looking to make more improvements in similar types of targeted loan relief programs, including Public Service Loan Forgiveness and addressing the significant backlog of borrower defense applications for debt relief.
The action affecting borrowers who have a total and permanent disability (TPD) brings total student loan forgiveness enacted by the Biden administration to roughly $8.7 billion, according to data released by the department, adding that federal actions amid the pandemic will lead to approximately $100 billion in total student loan forgiveness between March 2020 and September 2021.
The wave of student debt relief has provided a financial lifeline to the roughly 45 million student loan borrowers owing more than $1.7 trillion in outstanding federally-backed debt.
‘Meaningful Relief’
"The Department’s actions today will provide meaningful relief to hundreds of thousands of borrowers," Persis Yu, director of the National Consumer Law Center’s Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project, said in a statement. "Today’s action will take one step towards fixing a fundamentally broken system, but more still needs to be done. Millions of borrowers are still waiting for President Biden to make good on his promise to provide widespread student loan cancellation.”