Talking Points: Despite SCOTUS ruling, resources still available for student loan debt relief
MINNEAPOLIS -- The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday ruled against President Joe Biden's plan to cancel student loan debt for millions of Americans, ruling his plan unconstitutional.
Those loan payments have been on hiatus since the start of the pandemic. With the court's ruling, those bills will be due again within months.
The average student loan debt in Minnesota is $33,000. Those who were hoping for a big break from the Biden Administration are now not going to get it. The program would have erased $10,000 to $20,000 of debts for at least 27 million people.
The court's ruling comes just at the time when the three-year pandemic pause on student loan payments is ending. Those with loans will have to resume paying in October; interest on the loans will once again begin accruing a month earlier, in September.
The average student loan payment is around $300 a month.
Joan Navarre Sorenson, president and founder of Navigate Student Loans LLC, is nationally known in the field of managing student loan debt. She was a guest on WCCO Sunday morning.
"There are some amazing forgiveness programs. There is the Public Service Loan Forgiveness. A second is one that is not very well known and the technical term is the IDR, for income-driven repayment. You wouldn't think that is forgiveness, that is not even in the title," she said.
Biden says he is working on a plan that will ease the transition into once again repaying student loans. The president says he will create a 12-month program at the beginning of the repayment period that would allow people having trouble repaying to not go into default and end up with years of bad credit scores.
Biden says he will also try to create another overall relief program using the Higher Education Act of 1965. But details of that plan have yet to be announced and will likely face the same court challenges his first plan did.
You can watch WCCO Sunday Morning with Esme Murphy and Joseph Dames every Sunday at 6 a.m. and 10:30 a.m.
