Proposed settlement could end SAVE plan
By: Zachary Schermele
USA Today
WASHINGTON [ Former President Joe Biden's signature student loans repayment plan could be over, and the clock is ticking for millions of borrowers to enroll in another program.
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On December 9, [2025] the federal Education Department announced a proposed legal agreement meant to kill the program known as the Saving on a Valuable Educaiton, or SAVE, plan. the agency said it settled with several red states who sued to stop SAVE in March 2024.
..... If approved by teh courts, hte settlement will require that no new borrowers are enrolled in the SAVE program, which based monthly bills on borrowers' incomes and was hailed by the Biden administration the most affordable student loan repayment option in history. The department will also deny any pending SAVE applications and move current borrowers into different repayment plans.
..... The settlement would end the legal limbo in which more than 7 million SAVE borrowers have been stuck for more than a year and a half. those borrowers have been in administrative forbearance, not requiring them to make payments, since June 2024. Interest on their debt restated in August of this year. [2025] The agreement also represents what the Trump administration called the "final nail in the coffin" to Biden;s efforts to deliver nearly $200 billion in student loan relief to more than 5 million Americans with crushing debt. though the SAVE program specifically, President Donald Trump's predecessor green-lit roughly $5.5 billion in student loan discharges to nearly half a million SAVE borrowers. SAVE plan brought many borrowers' monthly payments down to $0.
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In a statement, Nicholas Kent, the education undersecretary, criticized the debt cancellation as an attempt to gain a "political win to prop up a failing administration."
..... "The Trump administration is righting the wrong and brining an end to this deceptive scheme," he said. "the law is clear: If you take out a loan, you must pay it back. Protect Borrowers, an advocacy group for people with student debt, called the settlement a "back-room deal" that amounted to "pure capitulation."
..... "The real story here is the unrelenting, right-wing push to jack up costs on working people with student debt," Perisi Yu, the organization's deputy executive director, said in a statement.