House Republicans want to ban student-loan forgiveness and immediately end the payment pause in their new debt ceiling bill

• House Republicans unveiled their bill to raise the debt ceiling on Wednesday.
• It includes banning student-loan forgiveness and immediately ending the payment pause.
• The bill is unlikely to pass, but it comes at a time of extreme uncertainty for student-loan borrowers.

Republicans' debt ceiling bill is finally here, and it's bad news for student-loan borrowers.

On Wednesday, House Republicans unveiled a bill to raise the debt ceiling through March 2024, and alongside increasing the limit, they have 320 pages worth of proposed spending cuts alongside it. For example, the legislation includes strengthened work requirements for welfare programs like SNAP, clawing back unspent pandemic funds, and repealing environmental programs.

And President Joe Biden's student loan programs aren't off the hook. According to the bill text, Republicans want to end the student-loan payment pause immediately, prohibit the Education Department from carrying out Biden's plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for federal borrowers, block the department's new income-driven repayment plan, and prohibit the department from making any new changes to debt relief programs without congressional approval.

These proposals aren't surprising. Since Biden took office, many GOP lawmakers have slammed the president's debt relief plans, saying they are an overreach of authority and costly to taxpayers. After the president announced his broad debt relief plan at the end of August, two conservative-backed lawsuits paused its implementation, and the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the cases in February.

In light of the lawsuits, Biden extended the student-loan payment pause through 60 days after June 30, or 60 days after the Supreme Court issues a final decision on the legality of the relief — whichever happens first — but Republicans have continued to oppose the relief, most recently introducing a resolution to overturn the debt cancellation without waiting for a Supreme Court decision.

The House is set to vote on the bill next week, but even if it passes the House, it's highly likely it will not get enough votes in the Senate. And even if it does, Biden will almost certainly veto it because he has repeatedly stated that raising the debt ceiling should be bipartisan — and without any spending cuts attached.

Even so, millions of student-loan borrowers remain in limbo. The Education Department is planning to resume payments this year with or without the broad debt relief, and while it's working to implement changes to income-driven repayment plans and the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, the lack of additional funding from Congress in this year's budget is causing delays with carrying out those reforms.

In the meantime, Democratic lawmakers and advocates have been urging Congress to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a financially catastrophic default. The Joint Economic Committee released a report last month that found private student-loan payments could surge if the US defaulted on its debt. And Melissa Byrne, executive director of We, the 45 Million — an advocacy group pushing for debt relief — said in a Wednesday statement that "McCarthy announced that he will hold the debt ceiling hostage and risk crashing the global economy in order to hurt 40M student loan borrowers and our families. "

"Everyone in the House and Senate must reject the Speakers and GOP efforts to repeal student loan relief, changes to PSLF + IDR, and preventing future relief," she said. "The American people deserve better."