President Joe Biden Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Federal Student Loan Forgiveness Means Millions For W.Va. Borrowers

Over a thousand West Virginians will have $8.8 million in student loans canceled.

On Wednesday the Biden administration announced $1.2 billion in student debt cancellation for almost 153,000 borrowers. New data released Friday shows the effects on West Virginia.

Over a thousand West Virginians will have $8.8 million in student loans canceled. Texas leads the nation with more than 14,000 recipients having $116.6 million in student loans forgiven, while Wyoming had the lowest amount of forgiveness with 150 borrowers having $1 million canceled.

Kirabo Jackson, a member of the Council of Economic Advisers, said this round of loan forgiveness is for borrowers enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education or SAVE repayment plan that have been in repayment for 10 years and took out $12,000 or less in student loans.

“In order to ensure that the burden of college debt does not reduce the benefits of having a college degree, the Biden administration has basically rolled out this new income driven repayment plan called SAVE,” he said.

Jackson said the program ties the payments that people make to their income levels and family size, not to the size of the loan itself.

“It means that early in someone’s career, when they’re not making a lot of money, their payments are going to be relatively low,” he said. “In fact, they can actually be zero, if their incomes are too low to basically be able to make payments, while also having enough money for groceries and necessities of life.”

Borrowers who believe they meet the criteria above are encouraged to immediately sign up for SAVE at StudentAid.gov/SAVE.

In total, the Biden Administration has now approved debt cancellation for nearly 3.9 million student loan borrowers totaling almost $138 billion in debt relief.

Federal Monies Proposed To Address Opioid Crisis And Child Care Costs

The Biden-Harris administration is asking Congress for domestic supplemental funding to assist with the opioid crisis and child care costs — some of which would come to West Virginia.

If adopted, West Virginia would receive an estimated $39 million to counter fentanyl trafficking and strengthen addiction treatment, overdose prevention measures and recovery support services.

Xavier Becerra, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said in West Virginia, about 76 percent of the overdose deaths that occurred between May 2022 and May 2023 are due to synthetic opioids, primarily illicitly manufactured fentanyl.

“From this year to the previous year, West Virginia saw, I think, almost 1,500 deaths from overdose, most of those opioid overdoses, and the lion’s share today is driven by fentanyl,” Becerra said. “And so the $1.6 billion that the president is requesting in emergency funding for opioids would really help us target fentanyl. And let states try to make sure that they can catch someone before they overdose.”

According to provisional data from the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, for a 12-month period ending in May 2023, 1,184 West Virginians died of an opioid overdose.

West Virginia also stands to gain $107 million for child care, if the domestic supplemental funding request is adopted by Congress.

Becerra said pandemic-era child care stabilization increased the labor force participation for mothers with young children by an additional three percentage points.

“The president’s request is to help extend funding for many of those child care centers, over 61,000 children and their families in West Virginia benefited from those funds, and at least 1,600 childcare providers,” Becerra said. “I think the average cost of childcare in West Virginia is somewhere around $9,000. And we know that the stabilization funds end up saving families over $1,000 a year in their childcare expense per child.”

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the price of child care for an infant in West Virginia is $8,736 per year.

Manchin OK With Wealth Tax As Biden Moves Forward on Domestic Policy Bill Talks

Pivotal Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin appears to be on board with White House proposals for new taxes on billionaires and certain corporations to help pay for President Joe Biden’s scaled-back social services and climate change package.

Biden said Monday he felt “very positive” about reaching agreement on his big domestic policy bill, aiming for votes in Congress as soon as this week — though that is far from certain.

“That’s my hope,” the president said before leaving his home state of Delaware for a trip to New Jersey to highlight the child care proposals in the package and his infrastructure measure.

Democrats are working intensely to try again to wrap up talks, scaling back what had been what had been a sweeping $3.5 trillion plan so the president can spotlight his administration’s achievements to world leaders at two overseas summits on the economy and climate change that get underway later this week.

Biden huddled with Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer at the president’s Delaware home on Sunday as they work on resolving the disputes between centrists and progressives that have stalled the Democrats’ wide-ranging bill. A person who insisted on anonymity to discuss Manchin’s position told The Associated Press the senator is agreeable to the White House’s new approach on the tax proposals.

It’s now being eyed as at least a $1.75 trillion package. That’s within a range that could still climb considerably higher, according to a second person who insisted on anonymity to discuss the private talks.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that even at “half” the original $3.5 trillion proposed, Biden’s signature domestic initiative would be larger than any other legislative package with big investments in health care, child care and strategies to tackle climate change.

“It is less than what was projected to begin with, but it’s still bigger than anything we have ever done in terms of addressing the needs of America’s working families,” Pelosi said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Biden met with Manchin and Schumer, D-N.Y., at the president’s home in Wilmington after Democrats missed last week’s deadline to resolve disputes. Biden has said he’d like to see a $2 trillion package and they are trying again this upcoming week to reach agreement.

W.Va. Attorney General Morrisey Teases Litigation Over Biden’s Carbon Reduction Plan

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has quickly come out in opposition of President Joe Biden’s plan to address climate change.

Biden announced parts of his plan on Earth Day, which was Thursday, during a virtual summit alongside 40 heads of government from across the globe. The plan aims to reduce carbon emissions in the United States by 50 percent by the year 2030.

In a Friday news conference, Morrisey teased a court challenge to Biden’s climate plan, in the vein of litigation he brought forth in 2015 over President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan.

“We’ve been down this road before with some success,” Morrisey said Friday. “And it looks like we’re going to have to go down there again.”

Morrisey said West Virginians and Americans should be “deeply concerned” with Biden’s climate plan.

The three-term Republican state attorney general argues that Biden’s climate proposal will drive up energy prices by making the nation dependent on energy resources from China and cost West Virginia and the rest of the U.S. jobs.

“I read the The Obama Clean Power Plan when it first came out — and we’ve been going through reading all this,” he said. “This puts the Clean Power Plan on steroids and much more.”

The Biden administration has focused on the clean energy sector in recent weeks.

As part of a proposed $2 trillion for retooling the nation’s infrastructure, the president has touted good-paying, climate-friendly jobs in Appalachia and other coal-producing parts of the country. Under Biden’s infrastructure plan, $100 billion would be dedicated to the electric grid and clean energy.

When it comes to reducing carbon emissions, Morrisey argued Friday that Biden does not have the power under the Constitution to enact such sweeping policy without congressional approval.

“He’s either going to have to give up or he’s gonna have to try to go it alone,” Morrisey said. “But there’s no statutory authority for President Biden to go alone and to make the kind of transformational challenges to the entire economy that would allow them to meet the commitment.”