President Biden says his administration is taking “another major step” in student debt handouts as the Department of Education will start emailing tens of millions of Americans informing them of potential options heading their way around the time of the presidential election.
The Department of Education says “all borrowers with at least one outstanding federally held student loan” should expect a message in their inbox notifying them that “they have until August 30 to call their servicer and opt out if they do not want this relief” — the rules of which are expected to be finalized by the department this fall.
“These rules, if finalized as proposed, would bring the total number of borrowers eligible for student debt relief to over 30 million, including borrowers who have already been approved for debt cancellation by the Biden-Harris Administration over the past three years,” the department said in a statement, adding that the “email does not guarantee specific borrowers will be eligible.”
The largest group potentially seeing handouts are borrowers who now owe more money than they did at the beginning of the repayment of their loans due to what the Department of Education describes as “runaway interest.”