February 17, 2023

AGs Say Proposed Federal Relief for Student Loan Borrowers Is a Good Start, Could Go Further

Bernard Nash

Cozen O'Connor

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Cozen O'Connor

A coalition of 22 AGs wrote a letter in support of the Department of Education’s proposed rulemaking regarding the Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) program for federal student loan borrowers and encouraged additional changes to expand the program’s benefits.
In the letter, the AGs commend the DOE for undertaking efforts to reform the IDR program, which they argue is unnecessarily complex and has been mismanaged by student loan servicers. In particular, the AGs assert that the DOE’s proposals to raise the discretionary income threshold, prevent negative amortization, facilitate automatic enrollment for delinquent borrowers, and count certain periods of forbearance towards loan forgiveness will all ensure that the IDR program better serves the borrowers it is intended to assist.
The AGs ask the DOE to adopt additional measures to improve the IDR program, including extending additional relief to parent borrowers and expanding the reach of the proposals to provide retroactive relief to borrowers who may have suffered harms from the IDR program’s prior weaknesses.

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