Biden Forgives Billions in Student Loans as GOP Scrambles on Shutdown

A month out from Biden’s transfer of power to Trump, the president used his power to announce a massive new round of student loan forgiveness for public service workers. The news comes as Republicans in Congress are still scrambling to avert a government shutdown.

The Biden administration Friday morning said it would cancel $4.28 billion in student loans for 55,000 teachers, nurses, service members, law enforcement officials, and other public servants. The relief brings the total of student debt forgiveness under Biden to nearly $180 billion for nearly five million people, according to a Department of Education statement.

The cancellations will be through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, or PSLF, which forgives public service workers’ remaining federal student loan balance after 10 years of payments. In recent years, the Biden administration has taken steps to reform and improve access to the program, which had long been plagued by mismanagement.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona in a statement praised the administration’s newly announced relief and broader success revamping PSLF, saying, “Four years ago, the Biden-Harris Administration made a pledge to America’s teachers, service members, nurses, first responders, and other public servants that we would fix the broken Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, and I’m proud to say that we delivered.”

A White House statement from President Biden said, “Because of our actions, millions of people across the country now have the breathing room to start businesses, save for retirement, and pursue life plans they had to put on hold because of the burden of student loan debt.”

As Biden’s efforts to enact sweeping student forgiveness have largely been mired or dashed by Republican-led legal challenges, the administration has since pivoted to a revised “Plan B,” which targets specific groups of borrowers. The incoming Trump administration is expected to take a hostile stance toward student debt forgiveness.

Trump and the rest of the GOP seem to be even more at odds over the debt ceiling than initially believed.

“Congress must get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous debt ceiling. Without this, we should never make a deal,” the president-elect wrote on Truth Social in the early hours of Friday morning. “Remember, the pressure is on whoever is president.”

“If there is going to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now, under the Biden Administration, not after January 20th, under ‘TRUMP.’ This is a Biden problem to solve, but if Republicans can help solve it, they will!” he continued in another post.

This is bad news for the party of “fiscal responsibility.” Trump floated completely abolishing the debt ceiling on Thursday, telling NBC News that it would be the “smartest thing to do.”

“I would support that entirely.… The Democrats have said they want to get rid of it. If they want to get rid of it, I would lead the charge,” Trump said. “It doesn’t mean anything, except psychologically.”

On Thursday evening, the House voted on a Trump-backed spending bill that included a two-year suspension of the debt ceiling. That more modest measure was rejected by a whopping 38 Republicans who voted against. The infighting is set to come to a head on Friday, as the government will shut down at midnight Saturday if an agreement is not reached. Perhaps Republicans aren’t as beholden to Trump and his budget wishes as we initially thought.

Elon Musk really hopes you don’t remember when he was cheering on a government shutdown … less than 48 hours ago.

Shortly after a new “clean” spending bill failed to pass the House Thursday night, Musk took to X to lament how this was all the Democrats’ fault.

“A super fair & simple bill was put to a vote and only 2 Democrats in Congress were in favor,” Musk wrote. “Therefore the responsibility for the shutdown rests squarely on the shoulders of @RepJeffries.”

“Shame on @RepJeffries for rejecting a fair & simple spending bill that is desperately needed by states suffering from hurricane damage,” he wrote in another post.

Musk conveniently did not mention that 38 Republicans also voted against the bill.

And on Wednesday, Musk was more than happy to stir up revolt among the GOP. Not only did he blast the original continuing resolution and threaten any Republican who supported it, but he even ranted about how the government actually ought to shutter, at least until Donald Trump enters office.

“We’ll be fine for 33 days,” wrote one X user, to which Musk replied an enthusiastic, “YES.”

“No bills should be passed Congress until Jan 20, when @realDonaldTrump takes office. None. Zero,” Musk wrote in a separate post, which read like marching orders to the more sycophantic GOP members, some of whom began to fantasize about a Congress led by Musk himself. Yeah, it’s gotten that bad.

Musk’s major blow-up and Trump’s last-minute request to raise the debt ceiling sent House Speaker Mike Johnson scrambling to assemble a “clean” bill. By Wednesday evening, Musk’s toddler-like tantrum had gotten him exactly what he wanted: an impending government shutdown. Too bad that wasn’t what the actual president-elect, not the unelected billionaire, was hoping for.

Now Musk’s only hope is to cast blame on Democrats, who probably would’ve supported the original bipartisan bill.

Donald Trump is desperate to pretend his shoddy leadership isn’t about to cause a government shutdown.

A “clean” spending bill, which contained a Trump-requested provision to suspend the debt ceiling for 24 months, failed to pass on the House floor Thursday evening, earning just 174 votes in favor and 235 against.

Trump tried to push the blame onto President Joe Biden, in a Truth Social post Friday.

“If there is going to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now, under the Biden Administration, not after January 20th, under ‘TRUMP,’” wrote the president-elect. “This is a Biden problem to solve, but if Republicans can help solve it, they will!”

But it’s not clear that Republicans are interested in solving anything. Thirty-eight Republicans joined 197 Democrats in voting against the pared-down bill, and a good portion of those GOP lawmakers spent the preceding 36 hours cheering on a shutdown alongside Elon Musk, the billionaire trying to run Congress through threats to oust elected officials.

Now Trump’s not even really trying to avert a shutdown but simply hoping that no one will blame him for it.

Government funding is set to expire at midnight.

Mike Johnson is about to be hoist by his own petard, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries isn’t coming to the rescue this time.

During a press conference Thursday with House Democratic leaders, Jeffries was asked whether his party would consider voting for Johnson to retain the speakership amid a Republican “revolt,” if the speaker were to put something “amiable” in his continuing resolution.

“No,” Jeffries answered flatly.

The House minority leader spoke harshly about Republicans’ antics, which upended the hefty bipartisan spending bill that would have funded the government until March.

“That bipartisan agreement has now been detonated because House Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government, and hurt the very working-class Americans that many of them pretend to want to help,” Jeffries said.

CNN’s chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju posted on X that sources in a closed-door meeting said that Jeffries and other top Democrats have been “conveying to their members that they are in no mood to bail out Speaker Johnson from the spending drama after Donald Trump’s late demands.”

Raju wrote that Johnson had yet to connect with Jeffries since the original spending bill collapsed, and that Johnson was seeking a way forward among GOP members, who don’t exactly seem to be in agreement.

Late Wednesday, almost 24 hours after the 1,547-page bill had been released and Republicans had been running around like chickens with their heads cut off, Trump finally responded to the bill, demanding that House Republicans find a way to raise the debt ceiling—or abolish it altogether, he said later.

Jeffries previously moved to save Johnson’s job when Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene attempted to have him ousted in April, dismissing her motion to remove the Louisiana Republican as “pro-Putin Republican obstruction.”

While House Democrats sought to minimize the chaos eight months ago, their will to fight for the embattled Johnson to retain his gavel appears to have greatly diminished. And this time, Greene’s floated replacing Johnson with Elon Musk.

By Thursday evening, the image of a new “clean” continuing resolution began to emerge. This bill would suspend the debt ceiling for 24 months, until January 2027, as Trump had requested. It would also give $110 billion in disaster aid and extend the farm bill, while cutting some other provisions, such as one promoting the sale of high-ethanol gasoline.