President Biden provided hundreds of thousands of borrowers with debt relief this year — but his campaign promise to cancel at least $10,000 of student debt per person remains unfulfilled.

Transcript

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

We're going to talk now about a subject that directly affects 46 million Americans - federal student loan debt. When he was running for president, Joe Biden talked a lot about helping these borrowers. He pledged to forgive at least $10,000 per person in student debt - a pledge he repeated a few weeks after the election.

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PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: The legislation passed by the Democratic House calls for immediate $10,000 forgiveness of student loans. It's holding people up. They're in real trouble. They're having to make choices between paying their student loan and paying the rent - those kinds of decisions. It should be done immediately.

SHAPIRO: One year later, he has helped many borrowers. But has President Biden done what he said he would? NPR's Cory Turner's here to answer that question. Hi, Cory.

CORY TURNER, BYLINE: Hey, Ari.

SHAPIRO: To start with, what has President Biden done for people with student loans?

TURNER: So so far, in this first year of the administration, the headlines for me all come from targeted loan forgiveness programs that were really already on the books. He's either improved or expanded them. One example is, borrowers with total and permanent disabilities are legally eligible to have their loans erased and have been for years. But a few years ago, I worked on an investigation that found that a majority of these eligible borrowers weren't getting help. So Biden's education department came in and overhauled the program. And they're doing the same thing with another program we investigated a few years ago - Public Service Loan Forgiveness. Overall, the department tells NPR, it has now erased a total of $12.7 billion in student debt, helping more than 600,000 borrowers.

SHAPIRO: So an expansion and improvement of existing programs - but does that add up to forgiving $10,000 per borrower as he promised?

TURNER: No, Ari, it's not even close. Compared to that $12.7 billion number, Biden's campaign promise would probably cost several hundred billion dollars. And some advocates argue, you know, this isn't just about keeping a campaign promise, though. I mean, research suggests that our current student loan system is deeply inequitable and that canceling student debt could dramatically shrink the country's racial wealth gap. Polling suggests the majority of Americans would support some kind of broad loan forgiveness within limits.

Then again, you know, critics have this idea - and there are many - they argue that it would be unfair to students who have repaid their debts. They also say it wouldn't fix the cause of the problem, you know, that the cost of higher education has skyrocketed. Here's Republican Senator John Thune of South Dakota speaking on the Senate floor.

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JOHN THUNE: What incentive will colleges have to restrain tuition growth if they think they can rely on the federal government to subsidize their students' tuition fees through loan forgiveness?

SHAPIRO: Well, given that kind of Republican resistance, what options does the president have to pursue some kind of broad student loan cancellation?

TURNER: Yeah. So there are basically two ways, Ari. Congress could do it if there was the support. Obviously, there doesn't seem to be. I mean, we've already seen the president cut his Build Back Better agenda roughly in half. And that's just to win over every member of his own party. The other way to do it, though, would be to use an old authority that came from Congress that - technically, it allows his education secretary to cancel loans.

I've spoken with several experts who say he could do this, but it is somewhat controversial. And Biden himself doesn't seem to be in a hurry to try it. Part of that may be the politics of the cost, which would be more than his free community college and universal preschool proposals combined. There's also a question of, would this kind of move to cancel student debt hold up in court? On Friday, I spoke with Biden's undersecretary of education, James Kvaal. And he told me the administration is still working all of this out.

JAMES KVAAL: We are looking very carefully with the White House and the Department of Justice at whether we can cancel loans across the board for everyone, and that's something where deliberations are still continuing.

TURNER: So officially, Ari, broad student debt relief is still very much on the table. I will tell you, though, I have heard from several advocates who insist, if the administration really wanted to do this, they could do it today. And they're worried that time's running out.

SHAPIRO: NPR education correspondent Cory Turner, thank you.

TURNER: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.