Need To Claim Student Debt Relief? Here's What We Know
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.4 • 25.7K Ratings
🗓️ 25 August 2022
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: political reporter Deepa Shivaram, education reporter Sequoia Carrillo, and chief economics correspondent Scott Horsley.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is Amanda from Atlanta, Georgia, getting in some last-minute cuddles with my senior foster dog Penny. |
| 0:06.4 | This podcast was recorded at 116 PM Eastern Daylight Time on Thursday, August 25th, 2022. |
| 0:14.1 | Things may have changed by the time you hear this, including Penny, who has been adopted, |
| 0:18.8 | and will be living out her golden years and her forever home after far too long in the shelter. |
| 0:23.6 | Happy Tails, Penny. Okay, here's the show. |
| 0:31.6 | That was so cute. Wow, made my day. Yeah, good story. |
| 0:35.7 | All right, hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Deepa Shiverham. I cover politics. |
| 0:40.7 | And we've got two special guests on the show today, Chief Economics Correspondent Scott Horsley. He's got |
| 0:46.4 | Great to be with you. And Sequoia Carrillo from NPR's Education team. Hi. Hi, thanks for having me. |
| 0:51.8 | And as you've probably guessed, they're here to talk about student loan relief and issue that |
| 0:56.4 | impacts more than 40 million people. Yesterday, President Biden announced that the government would |
| 1:01.9 | forgive up to $20,000 of federal student loan debt for Pell Grant recipients and up to $10,000 for |
| 1:08.8 | other folks. So Sequoia, let's dive in here. What does Biden's plan say and who is eligible for this |
| 1:14.4 | relief? So there are about 45 million student loan borrowers in the U.S. right now, |
| 1:19.6 | and President Biden's announcement yesterday has the potential to impact about 43 million of them. |
| 1:25.3 | So a lot of people are eligible for this relief. And the Education Department says that their plan |
| 1:30.6 | will completely erase the student debt of about 20 million borrowers. So this sounds huge, right? Like, |
| 1:35.8 | it will cut the number of borrowers almost in half, but it's also structured in an interesting way |
| 1:41.2 | because it is very targeted relief. The Biden administration says that about 90% of relief dollars |
| 1:47.7 | will go to borrowers that make less than $75,000 a year. And that's because of the way that they're |
| 1:53.4 | delivering the money. So individuals who make under $125,000 a year can have up to $10,000 in debt |
| 2:01.1 | canceled. And we say up to because there will most likely be a sliding scale. So if you're closer to |
... |
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