- Biden officially launched the student-loan forgiveness application website.
- He said 8 million borrowers had applied during the beta testing period "without a glitch."
The student-loan forgiveness application site is officially live.
After conducting beta testing over the weekend, President Joe Biden — alongside Education Secretary Miguel Cardona — announced that the application website is officially live, and borrowers can apply for up to $20,000 in debt relief that will start being processed by the Education Department. During his remarks, Biden noted that over 8 million borrowers applied over the weekend "without a glitch or any difficulty."
"It means more than 8 million Americans are starting this week on their way to receiving life changing relief," Biden said. "Millions more are going to have the opportunity to do it as well. As millions of people fill out the application, we're going to make sure the system continues to work as smoothly as possible."
Borrowers who submitted their applications during the beta testing period do not need to resubmit — their forms will now begin getting processed. As Biden noted, it takes just five minutes to apply — borrowers just need to enter basic information like their names, email addresses, and Social Security numbers. The department recommends applying before mid-November to ensure relief hits borrowers' accounts before payments resume in January 2023.
Scott Buchanan, executive director of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance — a group that represents federal loan servicers — told Insider that loan companies are not yet involved in the implementation process, and therefore cannot predict a timeline for when borrowers will actually get relief.
"We're really waiting on more firm information about dates and timelines which we don't really have yet," Buchanan said.
"This will take some time,"Buchanan added, noting that while many borrowers will have simple applications that can be quickly processed, "for some borrowers it can be very complicated depending upon how many different loans they have, and loan types and statuses of those loans."
The rollout of relief could also run into hurdles caused by a number of conservative lawsuits seeking to halt the plan. While none of the lawsuits have yet to prevail, borrowers are still waiting for a decision from a judge who heard arguments last week from six Republican-led states seeking to block forgiveness who claimed the debt relief will hurt their states' tax revenues.
During his Monday remarks, Biden said he does not think the GOP groups have any standing, and that Republican "outrage is wrong and it's hypocritical."
"I will never apologize for helping working Americans and middle class people as they recover from the pandemic," Biden said. "Especially not the same Republicans who voted for a $2 trillion tax cut in the last administration."