The Biden administration says its latest student loan forgiveness means the administration has discharged some $127 billion in federal student loans, but some conservatives are saying the true price tag is much higher.
On Wednesday the Department of Education announced the latest student loan forgiveness effort, a $9 billion cancellation for 125,000 borrowers through the department's Public Service Loan Forgiveness program and the Income Driven Repayment program.
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"The Biden-Harris administration's laser-like focus on reducing red tape, addressing past administrative failures, and putting borrowers first have now resulted in a historic $127 billion in debt relief approved for nearly 3.6 million borrowers," Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement.
The number includes several waves of forgiveness, most of which have been enacted through adjustments to the PSLF and IDR programs. The administration also canceled a wide swath of loans by settling a lawsuit brought by a group of students who attended for-profit colleges.
But the actual price tag of the administration's student loan policies could be much higher. The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, places the cost at more than $316 billion, a number it says includes all of the "forgone revenue" that has resulted from the administration's policies.
The institute says it classifies "forgone revenue" as all of the money that student loan forgiveness has cost the federal government. The tracker includes efforts to cancel loans through the PSLF and IDR programs, but also factors in lost revenue from the pause on student loan payments, which saw interest on loans waived for more than three years.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee, said in a statement that the administration's student loan forgiveness is "costing the American people hundreds of billions of dollars" and acting without congressional authority.
“The department still refuses to share with Congress what statutory authority they are claiming to justify this expenditure of taxpayer dollars," Cassidy said.
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House Education and Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) likewise blasted the administration's latest student loan forgiveness, calling it an "illegal charade.
"The Department of Education acts as if hardworking taxpayers are both willing and able to foot a tab worth billions of dollars that they do not owe," Foxx said. "Either the department is blissfully ignorant of its own binding legal constraints, or it is purposefully evading Congress’s approval and pushing forward with its own illegal charade — the latter is the obvious answer. Hardworking taxpayers deserve much better than this.”