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A Republican senator accused President Joe Biden of “mortgaging our country’s financial health” by extending a pause in student loan payments while he pursues a plan to cancel some of the loan debt, though he acknowledged his measure to block the proposal does not have the votes, Bloomberg News reported. Cassidy, along with fellow Senate Republicans John Cornyn of Texas and Joni Ernst of Iowa, introduced a resolution to overturn the president’s student loan forgiveness plan through a procedure that allows Congress to override federal regulations lawmakers disapprove of while avoiding a filibuster. Biden’s program to forgive as much as $20,000 per borrower has faced multiple court challenges and is currently suspended pending a Supreme Court ruling. The program is limited to individuals who make less than $125,000 a year and $250,000 for households. With the Democrats’ 51-49 Senate majority, Cassidy’s measure would require some Democratic support to pass. He said there was no timeline for when it would come to the Senate floor and that he had not spoken with any Democrats about possibly supporting it. He suggested Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who left the Democratic Party to become an independent, as one of the people he might approach.

Student loan servicers are in a tough bind, dealing with reduced staff as they prepare for the unprecedented situation of 44 million borrowers returning to payments later this summer, The Hill reported. Student loan payments are expected to restart at the end of August at the latest, including for many borrowers who graduated during the pandemic and have never made such payments before. “I think the real challenge is the resource constraint, right? That’s really on the customer service side,” said Scott Buchanan, executive director for Student Loan Servicing Alliance (SLSA). “Systemically, we can handle this, but that customer service component is going to be constrained, and that’s because the [Education] Department has continued to make cuts to the customer service funding for student loan servicers.” SLSA is a nonprofit trade association that works on student loan servicing issues. It says its members, which include federal student loan servicers Aidvantage and Edfinanical Services, are “responsible for servicing over 95% of all federal student loans and the vast majority of private loans.” The lack of money for customer service in the industry can potentially be traced back to a denial of increased funding for the Federal Student Aid (FSA) office by Congress last year. In preparation for student loan payments turning back on, the Education Department has announced multiple initiatives they say will make the transition easier for borrowers, including reforming the income-driven repayment (IDR) system so that some borrowers wind up owing as low as $0 a month. The department is still hoping the Supreme Court won’t kill President Biden’s student debt forgiveness program, though that will require it and the student loan servicers to take on the Herculean task of sweeping debt relief and loan repayment resumption at the same time.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday refused to halt a legal settlement that would erase more than $6 billion in debt owed by former students of colleges — many of them for-profit institutions — who have said they were misled by schools about academics and job prospects, Reuters reported. The justices turned away a request from three colleges that are challenging a settlement between the U.S. Education Department and borrowers that linked the colleges to claims of "substantial misconduct," an allegation they dispute. Three of the schools identified in the settlement — for-profit Lincoln Educational Services Corp and American National University Inc. as well as nonprofit Everglades College Inc. — challenged the agreement after it was approved by a federal judge in California last November. Around 3,500 borrowers entitled to automatic loan discharge under the settlement attended one of the three schools. The decision was separate from a case pending before the high court over the legality of President Joe Biden's plan to cancel $430 billion in student debt for about 40 million borrowers. A ruling in that case is expected by the end of June.

President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program faces a new threat from Senate Republicans even before the U.S. Supreme Court rules on whether it can be implemented, CNN.com reported. Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Joni Ernst of Iowa and John Cornyn of Texas, along with 36 other GOP senators, introduced a resolution on Monday to overturn Biden’s debt relief program, which promises up to $20,000 of debt relief for eligible borrowers. The measure would also end the pandemic-related pause on federal student loan payments, which has been in place since March 2020 and is set to expire this summer. Biden would very likely veto the resolution if it succeeds in both the Senate and House. But votes would force members of his own party, who have not all been in support of the student loan forgiveness program, to take a public stance. The program is currently blocked. The Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling in late June or early July.