- 128 House Republicans have filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court opposing student debt relief.
- New data revealed that nearly 12 million borrowers in their districts would benefit from the relief.
- And more than 4 million of them had already been approved before lawsuits halted the plan.
The Department of Education has just released the most comprehensive study yet on how many student borrowers would benefit from debt relief and where they live.
On Friday, the department released data showing the breakdown of student loan borrowers who applied for and were deemed eligible for debt relief of up to $20,000 from President Joe Biden by congressional district. It’s the most detailed breakdown yet and sheds light on the number of borrowers who would benefit from Biden’s relief in districts led by Republican lawmakers seeking to block the plan.
In recent weeks, 128 House Republican lawmakers filed an amicus curiae brief before the Supreme Court before pleadings on February 28 urging him to reverse Biden’s debt relief. A analysis new data from the advocacy group Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC) shows that nearly 12 million student loan borrowers are eligible for relief, more than 7 million have applied or self-enrolled, and more than 4 million of them were approved before the lawsuits block the ministry from processing any new applications.
Here are breakdowns of some of the most vocal opponents of debt relief:
- North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx, chair of the House Education Committee: 122,000 eligible borrowers; 29,700 fully approved borrowers
- New York Representative Elise Stefanik, a member of the House Education Committee: 156,200 eligible borrowers; 37,700 fully approved borrowers
- Indiana Rep. Jim Banks, member of the House Education Committee: 153,300 eligible borrowers; 36,400 fully approved borrowers
- Kentucky Representative James Comer, Chairman of the House Oversight Committee: 133,600 eligible borrowers; 32,400 fully approved borrowers
- Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee: 156,200 eligible borrowers; 37,300 fully approved borrowers
Additionally, SBPC’s analysis alongside the release of the data further broke down the impact of the relief for borrowers in the six Republican-led states that filed one of the lawsuits to block the debt relief. student debt: Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and South Carolina.
Leaders in those states argued that canceling student debt would hurt their states’ tax revenue, as well as the income of Missouri-based student loan company MOHELA. SBPC’s analysis found that in each of the major cities in these states, tens of thousands of borrowers would receive relief.
For example, in Kansas City, Missouri, 118,000 student borrowers would get more than $575 million in relief based on data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and the US Census Bureau. And in Charleston, South Carolina, 41,000 borrowers would receive $216 million in relief.
“As long as partisan politicians continue to oppose the will and best interests of the people they are bound to represent, the financial futures of these borrowers will be at risk,” the SBPC analysis said.
As the Ministry of Education has already saidmore than 40 million borrowers in total would be eligible for Biden’s debt relief, and of the 26 million borrowers who applied for the relief before the online application closed in October, 16 million between them had been fully approved.
But Republican lawmakers continued to be on the offensive: On Thursday, a group of them reintroduced a bill to end the suspension of student loan payments and prevent Biden from canceling student debt amid a national emergency, and the GOP House Budget Committee propose the same last week as part of its proposed budget cuts.
See the full data breakdown by district here: