The Biden administration indicated Friday it plans to scrap his latest learner borrowing forgiveness proposals, which could have wiped away debts for tens of millions of Americans and cleared recent paths to relief for borrowers in dire financial straits. 

The rationale? The U.S. Education Department has limited period and resources, and its chief would rather dedicate them to helping at-uncertainty borrowers repay their loans. The plans would also likely face more legal challenges and be abandoned once President-elect Donald Trump takes office. 

In official notices set to be published the day after Christmas, U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona acknowledged the “uncertainty around the implementation” of the proposals.

“The Department at this period intends to commit its limited operational resources to helping at-uncertainty borrowers profit to debt servicing successfully,” Cardona wrote. 

The shift amounts to a death knell for one of President Joe Biden’s biggest initiatives to assist Americans whose lives have been hampered by crushing learner obligation. Some advocates for borrowers said they were not surprised by the selection, which they viewed as another missed chance to fix a mounting crisis. Conservative critics characterized the administration’s reversal as a recognition that the plans never had a chance. 

“The Biden-Harris administration’s learner borrowing schemes were always a lie,” Sen. invoice Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, said in a statement Friday. “With today’s latest removal, they are admitting these schemes were nothing more than a dishonest attempt to buy votes by transferring obligation onto taxpayers who never went to college or worked to pay off their loans.” 

On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to dismantle the Education Department entirely. As January approaches, officials at the agency are scrambling to safeguard policies they view as essential to Biden’s legacy. Their selection to axe the proposed learner borrowing relief regulations reflects some of the challenging choices they’re confronting with limited period.  While Biden managed to forgive roughly $180 billion in learner borrowing obligation for about five million Americans, he failed to enact the sweeping relief he’d envisioned. A maze of litigation and congressional opposition stood in the way.  

Scott Buchanan, the executive director of the learner borrowing Servicing Alliance, which represents learner borrowing servicers, said the schedule mirrors a broader attempt by the Biden administration to shield federal rules – which can receive years to finalize – from being altered or dismantled after the president leaves office. 

“The recent administration could arrive in and transformation the language to whatever they desire,” Buchanan said.

Education Department officials spent years pushing the regulations through red tape. After months of community debate, the far-reaching proposals were greenlit by a panel of federal negotiators in February. The department released one of the plans in April and promised that borrowers could expect obligation relief as early as fall 2024. They released another schedule 11 days before the November election. 

Both plans will now be tossed, according to the announcement on Friday.

What did Biden’s learner obligation cancellation plans commitment?

One of the plans would have forgiven up to $20,000 of unpaid profit for more than 20 million borrowers, the White House said in April. More than four million borrowers in debt servicing for 20 years or more would have been eligible to have their obligation canceled in packed. 

The other policy would have canceled the obligation of borrowers the federal government determined were likely to default on their loans in the next two years. (To qualify, those borrowers also needed to meet criteria related to their preexisting obligation, household profits and assets.)

The second schedule would have created a recent application offering obligation relief to borrowers experiencing different types of economic hardship, including medical obligation, losses due to natural disasters and kid worry costs. 

Advocates for borrowers said Friday’s about-face left them frustrated. Braxton Brewington, the press secretary at the obligation Collective, said now that Biden’s larger plans are off the table, he hoped officials would spend the waning days before Trump’s inauguration quick-tracking relief for specific types of borrowers, such as people defrauded by predatory colleges.

“In some ways, it actually does make sense to not shift forward with plans that were, in our eyes, destined to fall short,” he said. “It’s just a shame that we’ve wasted so much period.” 

Rules about trans athletes, textbook fees nixed

In addition to tossing aside the learner borrowing proposals, the agency moved Friday to officially rescind a suggested policy that would’ve clarified the rights of transgender athletes. 

Changes to rules concerning college accreditation and textbook fees were officially quashed, too.

Other regulations, to expand federally funded college access programs to undocumented students and require attendance-taking in online college courses, may still make it through before Trump takes office.

Zachary Schermele is an education reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at [email protected]. pursue him on X at @ZachSchermele.