Good morning, everyone. And thank you to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Natalie Quillian for your remarks and more importantly your leadership.
Today, we celebrate a milestone that four years ago would have been unthinkable.
With the approval of another $4.5 billion in debt relief for 60,000 borrowers, the Biden-Harris administration has officially approved Public Service Loan Forgiveness for over one million of our nation’s teachers, nurses, first responders and other public servants totaling nearly $74 billion. Many of them we called essential workers during the pandemic.
Among the one million borrowers and counting who have now earned Public Service Loan Forgiveness are more than 32,000 borrowers in Virginia, over 44,000 borrowers in Pennsylvania, and over 55,000 borrowers in Florida. We’re releasing state-by-state data so you can see the nationwide impact.
The progress is historic. Before President Biden took office, the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program was so riddled with dysfunction that only 7,000 public servants had ever qualified.
This fell far short of what Congress envisioned when it passed the bipartisan legislation that created PSLF back in 2007.
One of the authors was Senator Ted Kennedy. And in a speech on the Senate floor, he talked about mounting student debt and the growing pressure on students to choose careers that could repay it.
How could we recruit people into critical fields like education, public health, or law enforcement if it meant a lifetime of student debt?
We know these jobs don’t pay a ton of money, but they touch countless lives. So the Senator helped write a provision to provide loan forgiveness to public servants after 10 years of service.
He said, and I quote, “this legislation gives young people a real opportunity, even if they come from homes with limited resources, that they can attend a fine college, and then they can go on to one of these public service jobs and make a real difference in their community.”
That was the promise of Public Service Loan Forgiveness: spend ten years serving the greater good and you could be debt free.
It was a simple idea. But a decade later, when many borrowers began applying for the forgiveness they earned – that promise was broken. Public servants saw their applications fall victim to fine print technicalities, red tape, accounting errors, and a wall of indifference from the last administration.
These Americans acted in good faith. They paid their student loans while working in the public interest. But instead of fixing PSLF, my predecessor was more focused on handouts for predatory for-profit colleges.
When I got to the Department of Education in 2021, just 7,000 public servants had ever qualified. By then, people had lost faith...They called PSLF a cruel joke. A broken promise. A nightmare. This is how folks described the program to me when I became Secretary.
Thankfully, President Biden and Vice President Harris made fixing PSLF a priority from Day One. We at the Department of Education created a process to make sure borrowers got credit for past payments. We conducted extensive outreach. We enacted new rules streamlining the process and centralizing management. And I just want to acknowledge all the folks on this call who were behind the scenes making this possible. Now, folks can keep track of their progress towards forgiveness on StudentAid.gov.
This is how we transformed a program that helped just 7,000 borrowers into one that has forgiven the debts of one million public servants and counting. That "and counting" is an important point because the process is fixed and will continue providing forgiveness to public servants for years to come.
7,000 to one million…That’s an increase of more than 14,000 percent in less than four years! Let me say that again – we grew the number of public servants earning forgiveness by 14,000 percent!
So, if you ever wonder if change is possible... If you ever wonder if what’s broken can be fixed... If you ever wonder whether government can turn a promise broken into a promise kept... Just look at what President Biden and Vice President Harris did for these one million public servants across America.
Today, I encourage you to ask someone why they became an educator. Or a social worker. Or a prosecutor, like our Vice President.
I guarantee not one will say they wanted to get rich. Instead, you’ll hear this: “I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to serve my community.”
This is what I've learned from the public servants in my own personal life.
My Dad, a police force veteran of 32 years. My brother, a lieutenant in my hometown. My sister, a public-school social worker. My wife, a college-to-career advisor in our public school system.
Today, I’m thinking about them – and all the public servants I’ve met while traveling this country.
The nurses who ran vaccination clinics during the pandemic.
The teachers who’ve gone above and beyond to help their students recover.
The career civil servants and Biden-Harris appointees I lead at the Department of Education, all working to Raise the Bar in education and create a more affordable, accountable student loan system.
I especially want to thank Under Secretary James Kvaal and his team for their relentless focus on fixing broken student debt relief programs like PSLF.
Their hard work is the reason why President Biden and Vice President Harris have been able to deliver student debt relief to nearly 4.8 million Americans – more than any administration in history.
I could not be prouder of the lives we’ve changed together. Thank you.