![\"BBC](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/1531\/live\/f7ff6280-7aa0-11ef-94ab-2d69b09e523d.jpg.webp\")
BBC<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\nAfter nearly two decades of student loan payments, Angela Carpio, 40, thought the finishing line was in sight.<\/b><\/p>\n
But now she’s caught in the middle of a political tug of war over a $1.74tn (\u00a31.31tn) mountain of student debt held by 45 million Americans, most of it owed to the federal government.<\/p>\n
For borrowers like Angela, a mother-of-two and software developer who lives near Minneapolis, Minnesota, the logjam has upended family budgets and made it difficult to plan.<\/p>\n
November’s election, in which two candidates with starkly different visions for handling the debt are running neck-and-neck, is only adding to the sense of insecurity.<\/p>\n
Angela took out her first student loans in 2001, eventually borrowing about $25,000 as she attended the for-profit DeVry University in Florida before earning an associate degree at Valencia College.<\/p>\n
Despite making steady payments, her balance is still stuck at more than $20,000 as interest racks up.<\/p>\n
“I’m just in limbo,” she says. “I don’t know what’s going to happen and it scares me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Since the 1990s, the US has offered some borrowers the option to repay student loans using a process similar to the UK, where bills are based on a proportion of a borrower’s income and the debt is written off after 25 years.<\/p>\n
But participation in the US repayment plan remained low, partly because of limited awareness.<\/p>\n
President Joe Biden, initially a sceptic of loan forgiveness, made it a signature policy for his administration, aiming to shore up support among younger voters, who are most likely to hold debts and rate the issue as important.<\/p>\n
Vice-President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic presidential nominee, has pledged to continue his efforts.<\/p>\n
Under Biden, the government has wiped out more than $168bn in debt for over 4.7 million borrowers, over a million of them lower-income Americans. That’s more loan forgiveness than any other president.<\/p>\n
But the US Supreme Court last year struck down the White House’s most sweeping proposal – to cancel $400bn in student loans for 16 million borrowers – ruling it was an illegal use of executive power.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A second Biden plan called Save (Saving on a Valuable Education) – which offered lower monthly loan payments – is on hold pending federal court review.<\/p>\n Republican officials have led the legal challenges, arguing the debt write-off is unfair to the vast majority of Americans who did not take out student loans.<\/p>\n But supporters of the White House policy say they are merely trying to fix problems that they argue have unfairly deprived borrowers of relief.<\/p>\n In the meantime, the court setbacks have caused head-spinning bureaucratic headaches for precisely those Biden was trying to help.<\/p>\n Angela had enrolled in Biden\u2019s Save payment plan, which promised to cut the $400 or so she owed each month roughly in half and cancel her debt after 20 years.<\/p>\n While the legal challenge has halted her payments – for now – she said the temporary reprieve has only stoked her worries about what comes next.<\/p>\n “It’s just a mess,” she said. “It’s very confusing and very hard to plan when the most concrete things are no longer there.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The US put student loan payments on hold during the pandemic. As of January, a few months after payments resumed, only half of debtors were up to date on their bills.<\/p>\n Veronica Williams, a 32-year-old from Sacramento, California, has $127,000 in student debt after earning a college and a master’s degree.<\/p>\n But the court battles have also left her loan up in the air, and she says she cannot even get answers about what she owes for her monthly payment.<\/p>\n Veronica, who works for the Department of Veterans Affairs, backed Biden in 2020, but said she was still waiting to decide if she would support Democrats again.<\/p>\n “There’s no clear understanding on what we’re supposed to do,” she said of her loan situation.<\/p>\n “It’s disheartening because it feels like it leaves me and my friends and colleagues confused on what the future… is going to be for us.”<\/p>\n On the campaign trail, Harris, while promising support for forgiveness, has not spotlighted the issue.<\/p>\n Donald Trump, meanwhile, has argued that Democrats have “taunted” borrowers with hope while failing to deliver.<\/p>\n At the same time, the Republican presidential nominee has condemned student debt forgiveness as “vile”.<\/p>\n For Republicans, who have seen college-educated and younger voters shift decisively to Democrats in recent years, the risks of opposing cancellation are minimal, said Anthony Fowler, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy.<\/p>\n For Democrats, it remains to be seen whether student loan forgiveness will help or hurt.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A June UChicago Harris\/AP-NORC poll found just 30% of Americans approved of Biden’s handling of the issue, though Republicans and the Supreme Court fared even worse.<\/p>\n Prof Fowler said he thought embracing debt forgiveness could backfire for Democrats, noting that less than 40% of US adults over age 25 hold college degrees and research has found sweeping forgiveness would benefit households with higher-than-average incomes.<\/p>\n “The politics of asking your plumber to pay for your kids’ fancy liberal arts degree – this doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But Mallory SoRelle, professor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, noted that an estimated one-third of Americans with student debt did not graduate and that polls indicate significant support among Democrats and independents for at least some relief.<\/p>\n “If [Biden’s plans] actually had gone through in a timely manner, I think we would see a much bigger boost for Democrats, but this is an issue that voters still say they care about,” she said.<\/p>\n Robert Henley, a 68-year-old public sector retiree from Tallahassee, Florida, voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020.<\/p>\n He said he opposed debt forgiveness as too costly to the government and unfair to taxpayers like him and his wife who had sacrificed to save for their children’s education.<\/p>\n But he said he expected to vote for Harris in November anyway, citing other concerns – such as his mistrust of Trump.<\/p>\n “As a country, we cannot afford to be giving away money – but really more importantly from my point of view, it’s unfair,” he said. “Obviously as a voter you can’t have every single issue fall out the way you want it.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/bbcx\/grey-placeholder.png\")
![\"US](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/e488\/live\/40e8f980-7b68-11ef-b02d-c5f3b724a1ea.jpg.webp\")
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n![\"Veronica](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/9974\/live\/987899c0-6c87-11ef-b169-a5a38341b787.jpg.webp\")
Veronica Williams<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"Robert](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/cce1\/live\/c4ea4520-7129-11ef-a321-235a0ab5ef76.jpg.webp\")
Robert Henley<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n