Joe Biden announces new steps to offer some student loan debt relief

After the Supreme Court on Friday blocked Joe Biden’s student loan debt relief plan from taking effect, the president announced new ways to help some student borrowers as he criticized Republican “hypocrisy” on the topic.

“We need to find a new way, and we’re moving as fast as we can,” the president said in remarks from the White House Friday afternoon, during which he announced “a new path consistent with today’s ruling to provide student debt relief to as many borrowers as possible as quickly as possible.”

“We will ground this new approach in a different law than my original plan, the so-called Higher Education Act,” Biden added.

Biden said the court’s decision was a wrong one and the fight on student debt relief is not over after the 6-3 ruling, which found that the program was unlawful because it had not been approved by Congress.

“Last year I announced my student debt relief plan, a plan that was on the verge of providing more than 40 million Americans with real debt relief up to $10,000 from any borrowers and up to $20,000 from those who had gotten a Pell Grant,” Biden said.

Biden accused Republicans of “snatching from the hands of million of Americans, thousands of dollars of student debt relief that was about to change their lives.”

“This program was all set to begin, the website had been set up the applications had been simplified so it took less than 5 minutes to complete. Notices had been sent out to people they were eligible for, 16 million people, 16 million people had already been approved,” Biden said.