U.S. Department of Education officially withdraws massive student loan cancellation plan

A month before U.S. President Joe Biden's retirement, two large-scale student loan cancellation measures that the administration has been pushing for have been officially withdrawn, major U.S. media outlets reported on the 20th local time.

As a result, the opportunity for about 38 million people to be forgiven of their debt has disappeared.

According to Politico, a U.S. political media outlet, the U.S. Department of Education has issued a public announcement and announced the withdrawal of two legislative notices issued in April and October, respectively.

In one of the two cases, it had already become quite difficult to push ahead with the ban, which was preemptively filed by Republican state attorneys general, as it was cited by federal district judge Matthew Shelf in eastern Missouri, who was appointed during Donald Trump's first term in power.

Judge Shelf called for the Department of Education to submit by the 20th a detailed plan on how to implement the plan for the rest of President Biden's term if he wants to continue to pursue it.

The ministry said it was "implementing difficulties" and was trying to use the rest of the time to "help at-risk borrowers resume their loan repayments" as a priority.

Officials from the Ministry of Education maintained that the two measures to be pursued and discarded were legal.

However, as the second Trump administration, which will take over the regime, is expected to take a different stance, it is very likely to be discarded immediately after the regime change if the Biden administration does not withdraw itself.

Department of Education and White House officials have not commented on the withdrawal.

According to the daily Washington Post, the student loan cancellation plan promoted by the Department of Education has been called Biden's "Plan B."

This is because President Biden initially pushed for $10,000 to $20,000 (14.5 million to 29 million won) in loans to about 40 million student borrowers using his emergency order authority to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak, but came up with a new plan to push for the cancellation after the Supreme Court put the brakes on it 6-3.

Since the Supreme Court decision, the ministry has been working on drawing up new student write-off regulations based on existing higher education-related law provisions that allow the education minister to write off student loans or adjust repayments, releasing the draft in April and October and announcing legislation.

Meanwhile, according to the Washington Post, the Biden administration has so far implemented $180 billion worth of aid, including loan forgiveness, to about 4.9 million Americans suffering from living difficulties during their four-year terms.

That includes $4 billion in loan forgiveness for 55,000 government employees.

Trump called the Biden administration's push for loan cancellation extremely "malicious" and called it extremely negative.