policy
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is abandoning his effort to cancel student loans for greater than 38 million Americans. This is step one in an administration-wide plan to jettison pending regulations to forestall President-elect Donald Trump from retooling them to realize his goals.
The White House expects to withdraw unfinished rules across multiple agencies if there shouldn’t be enough time to finish them before Trump takes office. If the proposed regulations were left of their current state, the following administration would find a way to redraft them and advance its agenda more quickly.
Even because the Biden administration seeks to repeal the foundations, it pushed for repeal through other avenues on Friday. The Education Department said it’s processing loans for an extra 55,000 borrowers who gained eligibility through a program called Public Service Loan Forgiveness, created by Congress in 2007 and expanded by the Biden administration.
With pending Biden regulations being withdrawn, there’s nothing stopping Trump from enforcing his own regulations on the identical issues when he returns to the White House, but he would have to start out over in a process that might take months and even years.
“I didn’t want it to end like this,” said Melissa Byrne, an activist who advocates for student debt relief. “Unfortunately, this is the most prudent measure at this time.”
She blamed Republicans for putting the Biden administration in this case. “It’s a disgrace that we have a GOP committed to keeping the American working class further indebted,” Byrne said.
In documents withdrawing the scholar loan proposals, the Education Department insisted it had the authority to cancel the debt but tried to deal with other priorities within the administration's final weeks. It said the administration would deal with helping borrowers get their payments back on course after the coronavirus pandemic, when payments were paused.
“The department currently intends to use its limited operational resources to help at-risk borrowers successfully return to repayment,” the agency wrote.
The withdrawals come as Washington prepares for a possible government shutdown that might further complicate the Biden administration's efforts to resolve outstanding issues.
Another proposed rule that might be withdrawn is a measure that may have prevented schools from enacting blanket bans against transgender athletes. Trump could rewrite the upcoming Title IX change to ban transgender athletes from participating in girls' sports, one among his campaign guarantees.
A government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to debate internal deliberations, said the federal government continues to support the goals of its regulatory proposals. However, the method might be lengthy because it requires legal reviews and gathering input from the general public.
Federal agencies are currently analyzing which rules to finish before the tip of Biden's term and which to roll back, the official said.
In recent years, presidents have tended to rely more heavily on executive orders and federal regulations to beat gridlock in Congress. However, the rulemaking process might be less sustained than laws, making policy more vulnerable to shifts between administrations.
Across the Department of Education and other agencies, dozens of additional regulations are pending, starting from relatively minor updates to sweeping policies which have serious implications for the nation's schools and businesses.
If a rule has already undergone a public feedback process under Biden, Trump could simply replace it along with his own proposal and go straight to adopting the policy, effectively bypassing the comment period.
The two student loan proposals, that are expected to be withdrawn on Friday, represented Biden's second attempt at comprehensive debt relief after the Supreme Court rejected his first plan.
One is a proposal from April that may have provided targeted debt relief to 30 million Americans. This identified several categories of borrowers who’re eligible for relief. Borrowers whose balances ballooned attributable to interest would have had their accrued interest canceled. Those who had been repaying their loans for 20 years or more would have had their loans worn out.
That proposal was halted by a federal judge in September after Republican-led states sued, and it stays embroiled in litigation.
The second rule being withdrawn is an October proposal that may have allowed the Education Department to cancel loans for people facing various hardships, including those scuffling with high medical bills or child care costs have.
Although Biden never achieved the sweeping loan cancellations he initially promised, his administration has forgiven an unprecedented $180 billion in federal student loans under existing programs.
“Thanks to our actions, millions of people across the country now have the opportunity to start businesses, save for retirement and pursue life plans that they had to put on hold because of student loan debt burdens,” Biden said in an announcement.
On Friday, officials announced they’d wipe out the debts of one other 55,000 employees — including teachers, nurses and law enforcement officers — through public service loan forgiveness. The program guarantees to cancel loans for borrowers who’ve worked in government or a nonprofit organization for 10 years.
The $4.28 billion in relief is anticipated to be the ultimate round of public service loan forgiveness before Biden leaves office in January.
Biden's transgender sports rule was proposed in 2023 but was delayed several times. It was intended to be a follow-up to his broader rule that prolonged civil rights protections under Title IX to LGBTQ+ students.
The sports rule would have prevented schools from banning transgender athletes outright, while allowing restrictions for specific reasons — for instance, when it got here to “fairness” in competition or reducing the chance of injury.
It faded into the background through the presidential campaign as the difficulty became the topic of Republican outrage. Trump promised through the campaign to ban transgender athletes and promised to “keep men out of women's sports.”
image credit : www.boston.com