With income-driven repayment plans paused, the student loan program is in chaos

It seems that no one is quite sure of what is happening with the student loan program today.

On Friday, a group of 25 Democrats in the Senate wrote to the Minister of Education, Linda McMahon, requesting more information about her agency’s decision in February February to remove online applications for many of the famous income -based payment plans. The move created the collective uncertainty of millions of borrowers, partly because it prevented many from filling the annual models needed to prevent their sudden laughter payments.

“Borrowers have relied on many of these plans for decades, and this sudden and reckless procedure means that millions of borrowers have fewer payment options available and not sure than to do to manage their debts,” says the letter, which was led by Senator Oregon Ron Widin and Vermont Sersers.

The Ministry of Education did not respond to a request from Yahoo financing. But the message confirms the extent to which policy makers in Washington remain in the darkness of the administration’s plans. Consumer groups are still equally.

“We are only trying to obtain the Ministry of Education to provide any kind of directives to borrowers and people who work with borrowers about what they do, the duration that will continue, and what borrowers can do in the meantime,” said Abi Shafouth, director of a student loan assistance project at the National Consumer Law Center. “I would like to say that the biggest problem at the present time is the lack of information.”

At the end of last month, the Ministry of Education closed the online applications portal for income -dependent payment plans, which put what borrowers owe every month in part of their profits. In a short note posted on the Stutrodaid.gov top, the agency said it removed the models in response to the ruling of the Federal Appeal Court that supported and expanded stopping the former President Biden’s plan, which was raised by many of the Republicans -led states to the end.

Read more: What is the income -dependent payment plan?

By closing the online models, the administration also prevented access to all other income -based plans, which use the same application but was not part of the litigation. Soon after, the Washington Post reported that the Ministry of Education had sent a memorandum to student loan employees who teach them to stop accepting or processing any IDR requests for a period of 90 days. According to the Senate Monday, there are nearly one million distinguished requests.

As a result of temporarily stopping, former students who face a problem in paying their loans every month cannot access applied for more management payment options, making them more vulnerable to the risk of failure to pay and its financial consequences, such as low credit grades.