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President Joe Biden announced his Student Loan Forgiveness Plan which will forgive up to $10,000 for some borrows and $20,000 for Pell Grant receivers. Individuals who are single and earn under $125,000 will qualify for the $10,000 in debt cancellation and if you’re married and file your taxes jointly or are a head of household, you qualify if your income is under $250,000. While there are many who are excited and thankful for the break, others feel that the plan does not go far enough. Others, especially some in the Republican Party are dismissing this plan.

 

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U.S. Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona stops by the Russ Parr Morning Show to talk about the plan and its benefits. There are still some questions to be answered. When will the debt relief start? What do you have to do to apply?

Listen to U.S. Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona with Russ Parr below

 

 

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Read the interview below

 

 

Russ Parr: Well on the line right now the U.S. Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona. Good morning, sir, how are you?

U.S. Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona: I’m doing great. Thank you. Good morning.

Parr: All right. First of all, this is actually really great news, the Biden-Harris administration, providing some relief for people that basically have student loans and Pell grants and I think it’s a good look. There are so many people that, you know, there are a lot of people that have questions as to who qualifies and when does this go into place? And, you know, just little, little simple questions like that. So let’s start right there. How much money basically, are you guys debt are you guys relieving on on the American people?

Cardona: Yeah. So you know, this is huge announcement yesterday that does a couple of things, debt relief, and then fix systems so that it’s easier to make payments in the future right? So the designees, $10,000, across the board if you make under $125,000, right? $10,000 in debt relief, but the President took it a step further, and he said, look, if you qualify for Pell, and we know a lot of our students who are first generation college students, a lot of our black and brown students qualify for Pell, you’re eligible for $20,000 in student loans, really. So that’s significant, you know, there’s 43 million Americans that are going to benefit from this 20 million are going to get their total debt canceled. That’s significant.

Parr: Absolutely. Now, when does this go into effect?

Cardona: So we’re working on it right now. We recognize many people have questions, and there are like, “what does this mean? What are the next steps?” So let me make it really clear, right? Studentaid.gov is the website studentaid.gov/debtrelief. And then you what you do there is you sign up to get an email. And then what we’re going to do is we’re going to give information to the folks on how they can how they can apply for it we’re going to make the process simple. You know, the last thing people need right now is more bureaucratic processes are going to take long, we’re going to make it simple. We’re going to make it easy to understand. And we’re going to make it so that people can just get their loan relief. You know, the pandemic made things worse, let me tell you, the system wasn’t great before, right? It broken, we’re fixing it. We’re working on it. But we have to make this process simple, especially to the pandemic made it worse, for so many black and brown borrowers, students. And this President is serious about addressing inequities that are rampant in our country.

Parr: I got to ask you, because there’s been some criticism of folks that have already paid off their their debts, their student loans and things like that. And they think it’s unfair, that they weren’t afforded an opportunity to receive some relief. What is your response? What is the administration’s response to that?

Cardona: Well, look, are we upset that small businesses got help? When nobody was visiting their small business last two years because of the pandemic? No, we’re happy with they’re still open, right? This is about helping people that were impacted by the pandemic. We know middle class folks and folks that are struggling financially, that can’t afford things, they got hit. Getting relief to help Americans get back on their feet, that helps everybody that helped the economy. So those people that are upset because they didn’t get it, because they paid off their loans. You know, if people go into default, let’s say we didn’t do this, and more and more people go into this fall, which is what we were expecting, that would hurt the local economy that would affect them negatively. So we should be happy when somebody else can get back on their feet. So they can move on in life and continue to succeed.

Parr: And of course, you know, you’ve got Mitch McConnell and other Republicans calling it socialism and so on, so forth. And you know, socialism, to me is like when you run up the debt $2.1 trillion. You don’t I mean, we, you no one cried. When we were giving tax breaks to these rich corporations. No one said anything. So I really wish that the Biden-Harris administration would bang that home, because it’s ridiculous to me that you would get upset over helping out the common everyday Joe, citizen of these of these United States. So I’m very happy and excited for for this this policy that the President has followed through on it was a campaign promise and he’s delivering. So you know, hats off to you guys in administration. But the messaging is important here to me, because they’re going to try to politicize this. At the same time, we are benefiting. And I would say congratulations to you guys and specially to you, Mr. Secretary, I think you guys are doing an extraordinary job.

Cardona: I appreciate that. And if I just comment on Mitch McConnell, if I were him I would be mad, too. This President is delivering. American Rescue Plan, Bipartisan Infrastructure Plan, Safer Communities Act, The PACT Act for our veterans, Inflation Reduction Act, Loan Debt Forgiveness. Come on. I could see why he’s feeling a little bit concerned right now. Because this President is about substance not sensationalism. He’s getting the job done

Parr: U.S. Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona thank you so much sir I really appreciate it.

 

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