More than 643,000 federal student loan borrowers are waiting for the Trump administration to forgive their debt or enroll them in an affordable repayment plan, according to a new court filing.
Trump officials reported on Wednesday that 553,966 borrowers' requests for an income-driven repayment plan were still pending as of the end of March. Another 89,720 borrowers are waiting on an answer to their Public Service Loan Forgiveness buyback application, the court filing showed.
Signed into law in 2007 by President George W. Bush, PSLF offers debt cancellation to nonprofit and government workers after a decade. The buyback option, introduced by the Biden administration, allows borrowers pursuing PSLF to retroactively pay for any months they missed due to forbearance or deferment, accelerating their timeline to forgiveness.
Many student loan borrowers rely on IDR plans to afford their monthly payments. The plans limit monthly payments to a share of discretionary income and cancel any remaining debt after a certain period, typically 20 or 25 years.
Experts expect the backlog of new repayment requests to worsen now that the U.S. Department of Education has set a deadline for millions of student loan borrowers to exit the Biden administration-era Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, plan.
IDR progress, but not for PSLF 'buyback'
The Education Department has made progress on processing IDR applications: More than 576,600 borrowers' requests were pending in February, compared with nearly 1.4 million in July.
It also forgave roughly 21,200 student loan borrowers' debts in March, under the terms of their IDR plans. In February, the department did not forgive any borrowers' debts through those programs.
However, the PSLF buyback pileup continues to grow. More than 88,000 federal student loan borrowers were in the queue in February, up from 83,370 in December and 80,210 in November.
The challenges accessing relief programs come at an especially difficult time for student loan borrowers, experts say. Around 9 million borrowers were in default as of December, according to an analysis of government data by higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz.
About 42% of federal student loan borrowers say their monthly payments make it harder to cover basic needs such as food and housing, according to a recent survey by The Institute for College Access & Success and Data for Progress.
The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
