Silver State Times

The vast majority of Hill staff could fall under President Joe Biden's qualification threshold for his student loan forgiveness plan, making them eligible to receive a minimum of $10,000 in debt cancellation.

Salary data retrieved from LegiStorm.com showed that an estimated 93.3% of U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto's (D-Nevada) staff could qualify for loan forgiveness. This translates to $560,000 going directly to the staff of the senator.

The above percentage is merely an estimation as there are several unknown factors, including whether or not the staffers went to college, if they received loans and/or still have them, if they had a full-ride scholarship, and the total household income of Hill staffers.

Since a vast majority of Hill staff make under the $125,000 threshold set by the White House, nearly 2,000 House and Senate employees—some of whom are already enrolled in a student loan repayment assistance program offered to staff—could benefit from the $10,000 in federal debt cancellation and another $10,000 for those that were Pell Grant recipients, a recent Politico report said.

"This is ultimately a program designed to directly benefit the pocketbooks of affluent, urban, college-educated elites, who now comprise a significant swathe of the Democratic Party’s voting base," Jack McPherrin said in an opinion piece titled "Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Scheme Continues Democrats’ War Upon America," published recently on RedState. 

In July 2021, Cortez Masto was part of a group of Democrats urging the Education Department to expand debt relief for student borrowers as soon as possible.

But soon after the news of Biden's loan forgiveness plan was announced, Cortez Masto—who is up for re-election this year—told Axios, "I don't agree with today's executive action because it doesn't address the root problems that make college unaffordable."

Biden announced on Aug. 24 that he will cancel $10,000 of federal student loan debt for borrowers making less than $125,000 a year, FOX News reported. For borrowers who attended college on Pell Grants, the forgiveness extends up to $20,000 in student loan debt. In addition, the plan extended pandemic-era student loan payment freezes through the end of this December.

Biden campaigned on cancelling student debt, Forbes reported.

“I’m going to eliminate your student debt if you come from a family [making less] than $125,000 and went to a public university,” Biden said while on the 2020 campaign trail. “I’m going to make sure everyone gets $10,000 knocked off of their student debt.”