Betsy Mayotte

And borrowers that may have been eligible for forgiveness sooner may have to wait longer to get loan forgiveness under a different income-driven repayment plan.

Well, that's a great question.

They're your friends, neighbors, family members.

You know, I think a lot of people still fit, including policymakers for that matter, think that the student loan issues are a young person's issue.

And that couldn't be further from the truth.

Half of all federal student loan borrowers are over the age of 30, a quarter are over 45, and the fastest growing population of consumers that carry federal student loan debt are the over 65s.

So, you know, the people that struggle with student debt are not necessarily the people that owe, you know, several hundred thousand dollars in federal student loans.

It might be the person that only owns 10,000.

But the reason they struggle is because the reason they only owe 10,000 is because they had to drop out of school for whatever reason.

So they have debt and no degree.

So the profile of the borrowers for whom the SAVE plan made their loans more affordable is very broad and wide.

Federal student loan payments...

whether the borrower is in default or not, it does affect the broader economy because the more people have to pay on their student loans, the less they have for other types of disposable spending.

The other thing I want to bring up is there was an incredibly alarming data point that happened at the end of December, which was that in addition to the three or four million borrowers that were already in default on their student loans, an additional

Almost, I believe it was 3.4 million newly defaulted borrowers hit the books.

This was something I've been worried about for a couple of years, and it more than doubled the number of borrowers in default and actually put the total number of borrowers in default at a much higher number than we were at pre-COVID.

And defaulted borrowers have an even more significant impact to the broader economy.

It has a huge impact on their credit scores, which affects other types of credit and prevents these people from buying homes, buying cars, qualifying for apartments, even getting certain types of jobs.

So the depressing trickle down of a defaulted student loan should not be ignored.

And it's something I unfortunately think these historic default rates, I think, are something we're going to be living with for, it's not going to be a flash in the pan.