Biden offers new student debt relief plan after Supreme Court ruling

President Joe Biden has vowed to push ahead with a new plan to provide student loan relief for millions of borrowers, while blaming Republican "hypocrisy" for triggering the day's Supreme Court decision that wiped out his original plan.

"I know there are millions of Americans in this country who feel disappointed and discouraged or even a little bit angry," Biden said on Friday. "I must admit I do too."

Biden announced measures to "provide student debt relief to as many borrowers as possible, as quickly as possible."

These include a temporary 12-month pause on penalties for missing debt repayments.

Biden blamed Republican opposition for triggering the Supreme Court's ruling and slammed the decision as wrong.

He said payment requirements for student loans would resume in the coming weeks, but that he would work under the authority of the Higher Education Act to begin a new programme designed to ease borrowers' threat of default if they fall behind over the next year.

Hours after the Supreme Court ruling, Biden commented from the White House, trying to stay on the political offensive even as the ruling undermined a key promise to young voters who will be vital to his 2024 reelection campaign.

Biden delivered most of his remarks in a measured tone but then raised his voice at the end when a reporter asked if he had given borrowers false hope.

"I didn’t give any false hope," he said heatedly.

"The Republicans snatched away the hope that they were given."

Ticking off what he said were billions of dollars in benefits to the well-to-do under the Trump administration, he said, "These Republican officials just couldn’t bear the thought of providing relief for working-class, middle-class Americans."

"The hypocrisy of Republican elected officials is stunning," he said.

Top administration officials said they had met for weeks to discuss how to handle the Supreme Court's expected reversal of Biden's original plan.

Biden 'has more tools'

Electoral consequences aside, progressive Democrats in Congress and activists clamoured for the White House to offer a swift and substantial response to the court's decision.

Natalia Abrams, president and founder of the Student Debt Crisis Center, said the responsibility falls "squarely" on Biden’s shoulders.

"The president possesses the power, and must summon the will, to secure the essential relief that families across the nation desperately need," Abrams said in a statement.

Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, one of her party's leading voices on the left, said, "The president has more tools to cancel student debt — and he must use them."

The GOP has long argued that repaying student loans is a fairness issue, and they celebrated the ruling. Betsy DeVos, who served as secretary of education under president Donald Trump, called Biden's original plan "deeply unfair to the majority of Americans who don’t have student loans."

Republicans now seeking their party's 2024 presidential nomination lined up to applaud the ruling, with former vice president Mike Pence saying he was "pleased that the court struck down the radical left’s effort to use the money of taxpayers who played by the rules and repaid their debts in order to cancel the debt of bankers and lawyers in New York, San Francisco, and Washington."

The White House’s efforts to block payments were an attempt to keep a Biden 2020 campaign promise to wipe out student loan debt that was especially popular with young voters and progressives.

Both will be vital to Biden in next year’s presidential race — but may be less energised about supporting him after the high court’s decision.

A May poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 43 percent of US adults approve of how Biden sought to handle student debt, similar to his approval rating overall of 40 percent in the same poll.

The poll suggested that Biden gets credit for his handling of the issue among young adults in particular.

About 53 percent of adults under age 30 said they approved of Biden’s handling of student debt, compared with only 36 percent who approved of his job performance overall.