Menendez participates in historic people’s rally for student debt cancellation outside of the Supreme Court

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), a leading advocate in Congress for meaningful student debt relief, Tuesday stood in solidarity with student borrowers, parents, students, and advocates for the historic People’s Rally for Student Debt Cancellation before the start of oral arguments at the Supreme Court on the Biden Administration’s student debt relief plan.

According to the White House, more than 759,000 borrowers in New Jersey have already applied for student loan forgiveness and many more are expected to benefit from the Administration’s plan.

Nationally, it is estimated that more than 40 million Americans would benefit from these student debt relief efforts, of which a significant number are Black and Latino federal borrowers. About half of all Latino borrowers will have their entire federal student debt forgiven while the typical Black borrower will see their balance cut nearly in half and more than one in four Black borrowers will see their balance forgiven altogether.

“Cancelling student loan debt is the right thing to do. It is the right thing to do when we grant tens of millions of hard-working Americans some economic relief. It is the right thing to do when we fight for an equitable higher education system where every American can have a shot at prosperity. It is the right thing to do when we live up to our founding creed of fairness, affording today’s generation the same opportunities that prior ones enjoyed,” Menendez said. “Opponents of student loan cancellation are on the wrong side of history; they are using wrong arguments to pursue a wrong policy for the wrong reasons.”

Sen. Menendez has long advocated for meaningful student debt cancellation, and applauded the Biden Administration when it took the historic step to cancel student debt for millions of student borrowers last year. Since this relief was first announced, Republican states have attempted to callously block the Administration’s loan forgiveness plan from moving forward.

In addition to pushing for student debt cancellation, last September Sen. Menendez penned an op-ed urging the Biden Administration to keep the pause on student debt payments in place until it developed and implemented a unified plan to tackle the broken student loan system, including improvements to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program and lower payments under existing Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) programs.

Since then, the Administration has taken significant steps modeled after the recommendations the Senator outlined in his op-ed, as well as PSLF legislation he introduced last summer.

Last April, Sen. Menendez and several of his colleagues also called on the Departments of Education and Justice to follow through on their pledge to improve the handling of student debt bankruptcy claims.

Sen. Menendez authored the Student Loan Tax Relief Act, along with Sen. Warren, which exempts forgiven student loan debt from tax liability through 2026. The lawmakers had this provision successfully included in the American Rescue Plan.