Pete Mendoza
U.S. President Joe Biden and his Administration announced Wednesday the forgiveness of $1.2 billion worth of student debt through the Saving on a Valuable Education repayment plan, also known as the SAVE.
UTRGV assistant professor of Political Science Alvaro Corral said the SAVE repayment plan will affect only people who qualify.
“[Biden’s] attempted to gradually cancel student loans debt from executive action,” Corral said. “Last week’s announcement under this new SAVE program is going to save, it’s going to affect about 150,000 borrowers who qualify for about a billion or so dollars or perhaps a couple billion in relief for these borrowers.”
He said people who qualify would be students who borrowed less than $12,000 and have been paying for over 10 years.
Corral said the Biden Administration attempted a similar effort last year on a greater scale affecting millions of borrowers. This caused controversy between states and had a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court against the idea.
For this reason, the Biden Administration scaled the SAVE plan down to fit a more realistic approach with less legal issues.
Corral said the Biden Administration sees the plan having a positive effect on the economy.
“They’re making the argument here that by mostly sort of disproportionately young people not having to be saddled with this much debt, they could spend that money elsewhere in the economy and sort of continue to sort of drive the economy and make it stronger,” he said.
The political science assistant professor also said Biden could be using this as a move to drive his campaign and gain influence in younger voters for the Primary Election Tuesday.
Integrated health science sophomore Emily Ramirez said she agreed with Biden and his Administration’s SAVE plan.
“A lot of people have a lot of student loans and so the fact that he’s helping out with that, I bet it’s really helpful for a lot of people,” Ramirez said.
Biomedical science senior Alekxa Guevara said she knew some students do go into debt trying to obtain an education.
“I feel like that would help them get relief from that because I know sometimes we don’t really have the time to work as much or we don’t make enough money at our job,” Guevara said. “So, I feel like that would help students a lot.”
For more information on the SAVE plan, visit whitehouse.gov.
This is Pete Mendoza for Vaquero Radio.
