President Biden Delivers an Update on Efforts to Cancel Student Debt Transcript

Mr. President.

Hey, folks. Good afternoon. Before I speak about student debt relief, I want to take a minute to talk about what took place yesterday in the Congress. I’ll be very brief. The House will now reorganize and select a new Speaker. I know it’s going to take some time, but I remind everyone we had a lot of work. We have a lot of work to do and the American people expect us to get it done. The argument we reached was all about what comes next, but we had an agreement. We reached an agreement over the weekend. Funds for government only another 40 days. We cannot, and should not, again, be faced with an 11th hour decision. Brinkmanship threatens to shut down the government. And we know what we have to do and we have to get it done in a timely fashion. More than anything, we need to change the poisonous atmosphere in Washington.

(01:26)
I know we have strong disagreements, but we need to stop seeing each other as enemies. We need to talk to one another, listen to one another, work with one another, and we can do that. I joined with Minority Leader Jeffries in saying that our Republican colleagues remain committed to working in a bipartisan fashion. We were prepared to do it as well, for the good of the American people. Twice in the last six months, both Houses came together on bipartisan basis, once to avoid default, once to keep the government open. And, while we should never have been in a situation in the first place, I’m grateful that leaders on both sides came together, including former Speaker McCarthy, to do the right thing.

(02:10)
Now, turning to student debt relief. When I ran for President, I vowed to fix our broken student loan program because, while college degree is still the ticket to a better life, that ticket has become excessively expensive. Americans who are saddled with unsustainable debt, in exchange for a college degree, has become the norm. Since my administration has taken significant action to provide student debt relief to as many borrowers possible as quickly as possible. That starts with making sure the existing system works and the way it was supposed to work for student borrowers.

(02:47)
We fixed what was called the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which was designed originally to make sure school teachers, firefighters, social workers, and other public servants can get their student loans forgiven if they make 10 years of payments and do 10 years of public service. By the time I took office, that program had been in place for nearly 15 years, but because of red tape, only 7,000 borrowers had been helped. Today, thanks to the reforms, more than 700,000 borrowers have had their debts forgiven.

(03:23)
Just the other day, I spoke with Tanya and Chad, a married couple in their fifties who both work at public high school in Milwaukee. For years, they paid over $800 a month toward their student loans. It meant they couldn’t put away any money for retirement and, this summer, thanks to fixes we made to the debt relief program, for people in public service, Chad and Tanya’s remaining balance was forgiven. Tanya said, “the amount of relief this gives us as indescribable.” Now, they can finally start savings for retirement.

(03:57)
Next, we fixed what’s called the Income Driven Repayment program. Here’s how that works. If you have an undergraduate loan, after 20 years of straight paying, not missing paying and debt on a monthly basis, whatever’s left to your loan is forgiven after 20 years. But because of administrative failures, some people who did pay their loans, for 20 years or more, did not get the debt relief they’d earned. We fixed that and made sure borrowers got credit for every single payment they made.

(04:29)
As a result of these changes, today, I’m announcing my administration has approved an additional $9 billion in relief for 125,000 borrowers in just the past few weeks under that program. With the latest debt cancellation, in total, my administration has canceled $127 billion in student debts for nearly 3.6 million Americans. This kind of relief is life-changing for individuals and their families, but it’s good for our economy as a whole as well. By freeing millions of Americans from the crushing burden of student debt, it means they can go and get their lives in order. They can think about buying a house, they can start a business, they can be starting a family. This matters. It matters with their daily lives.

(05:13)
This latest progress builds on other steps we’ve taken. We made the largest increase in Pell Grants in over a decade, helping students and families making less than $60,000 a year get to college. We made additional improvements in the income driven repayment program. Before I took office, student borrowers would pay no more than 10% of their discretionary income on a monthly basis, if they wanted to do it that way. But, under my administration’s plan, which is called Save Plan, we reduced that to 5% for undergraduate borrowers. It’s now the most generous repayment program ever. Under this plan, no one with an undergraduate loan, today or in the future, whether they’re at a community college or a four-year college, will have to pay more than 5% of their discretionary income to repay these loans. That’s income after you pay for necessity, like housing, food, and other necessities. You can sign up for the Save Plan at studentaid.gov/save. Studentaid.gov/save. And, remember, if you keep up your payments after 20 years, whatever’s left in those loans is forgiven, and we’re still not done.

(06:33)
As you might remember, last year, I announced a major proposal for student debt relief we’re on the verge providing more than 40 million Americans with real relief from their student debt. The money was literally about to go out the door, but Republicans and Republican elected officials and special interests stepped up and sued us. The Supreme Court sided with them snatching, from the hands of millions of Americans, thousands of dollars in debt and student debt relief that was about to change their lives. As I said at the time, I believe the court’s decision to strike down my student debt relief program was wrong, but I promised I wouldn’t give up.

(07:10)
Since then, my administration has been pursuing a new approach, grounded and under a different law. The Higher Education Act. This act allows a Secretary of Education to compromise, waive or release loans under certain circumstances. Last week, the Department of Education took a critical step in this process by identifying specific challenges that borrowers face in the current system, so we can move forward with a new rule to address these changes. For example, there are many borrowers who have made payments for many years, but because of interest, they still owe more than they originally borrowed. My administration is doing everything it can to deliver student debt relief to as many as we can as fast as we can.

(07:54)
This is in contrast to House Republicans who helped block the previous debt relief plan, nearly shut down the government over the extreme demands, which would’ve hurt hardworking families. But they had no problem with the paycheck protection program. Remember that? The PPP program during the last several years, which was designed to help business owners who lost money, which was legitimate, because of the pandemic. Members of Congress got over hundreds of thousands of dollars because their businesses lost money. It was a worthy program.

(08:31)
Let’s be clear, some of the same elected Republicans or members of Congress were strongly opposed, getting relief to students, got hundreds of thousands of dollars relief for themselves to keep their businesses open. Several members of Congress got over a million dollars and all those loans were forgiven. The hypocrisy of this I find stunning. I supported that program and I support the Student Debt Program. My administration will continue to use every tool at our disposal, to help ease the burden of student debt, so more Americans can be free to achieve their dreams. It’s good for our economy, it’s good for our country, and it’s going to change their lives. Thank you very much.

Mr. President, question on Speaker McCarthy, if I can. Then Speaker McCarthy said that the two of you hadn’t spoken directly in a long time. Why is that? And are you committed to engaging more regularly with the next House Speaker?

We had two agreements we shook hands on and I assumed he was working with… I knew he was working with the Democrats in the House and Senate. It wasn’t for me to do anything. If he wanted to talk to me, I was available. I’m available whomever wants to talk to me, but the idea that I was going to somehow convince McCarthy to change his view was not reasonable.

Does the disarray on Capitol Hill after your conversation with allies yesterday worry you that you won’t be able to deliver the aid that the US has promised to Ukraine?

It does worry me, but I know there are a majority of members of the House and Senate, in both parties, who have said that they support funding Ukraine with your… I’m going to be announcing very shortly a major speech I’m going to make on this issue and why it’s critically important for the United States and our allies that we keep our commitment.

Mr. President, are you also concerned about the rest of your domestic and foreign policy initiatives being imperiled because of what we saw happen yesterday, the dysfunction in Congress, the chaos that we saw on the House side. Does that concern you in any way?

The dysfunction always concerns me. The programs that we have argued over, we passed bipartisanly, I’m not concerned that they’re going to all of a sudden come in and try to undo them. Although there will be some. There will be some, I’m sure. There’s half a dozen or more extreme MAGA Republicans who would like to eliminate just about everything I’ve done, but I don’t think that’s going to get there.

If I may, without additional funding, how long will the United States be able to support Ukraine?

We can support Ukraine in the next tranche that we need, and there is another means by which we may be able to find funding for that, but I’m not going to get into that now.

President, have you promised President Zelenskyy ATACMS for Ukraine?

Say again? I’m sorry.

Have you promised President Zelenskyy, during his visit in the White House, that you would provide ATACMS, the long range missiles, for Ukraine?

I have spoken with Zelenskyy and, everything he’s asked for, we’ve worked out.

Tell us a little bit more-

Mr. President, is there a plan-

Tell us a little bit more about this speech you’re going to give. What argument are you going to make?

Why don’t you wait and listen to it? I’m going to make the argument that it’s overwhelmingly in the interest of the United States of America that Ukraine succeed and it’s overwhelmingly in our interest. I’ve spent two and a half years putting together coalitions that no one thought could be put together and they’ve strengthened us across the board, not just as it relates to Ukraine. Whether it’s Japan and South Korea, or whether it’s what’s happening in Europe itself.

(12:29)
And so, I think that it’s clear to the vast majority of the foreign policy community, on both left and right, that this has been a valuable exercise for the United States of America to increase the support we have around the world. What I don’t want to do is… We put together over 50 nations, 50 nations supporting Ukraine, and we are the organizer of that. I’ve met with… Don’t hold me to the exact number, 16 or 17 yesterday, in a long conversation and made the case that I knew that the majority of the American people still supported Ukraine and the majority of the members of the Congress, both Democrat and Republican, support it. I don’t think we should let the gamesmanship get in the way of blocking it,

Sir, now that they’re asking, what’s your advice to the next House Speaker?

That’s above my pay grade.

Thank you, sir.

Okay. Thanks, everybody.