On April 1, I updated AEI’s Student Debt Forgiveness Tracker, which keeps tabs on how much loan forgiveness has already gone out. The spectacle of the Biden administration’s $400 billion plan to forgive up to $20,000 per borrower, which is currently being weighed by the US Supreme Court, can make it seem like forgiveness is in limbo. While the big ticket forgiveness may (or may not) be coming, we should keep an eye on the billions of dollars in forgiveness leaving the US Treasury every month.

In April, the pandemic student loan payment pause added just under $6 billion to the Tracker total. Six billion is a number so large that it is difficult to comprehend. To aid your understanding of the scale, the SDFT website makes numerous comparisons that put the much larger forgiveness totals into context—in terms of other spending priorities, federal budget items, or education spending. Next to these gargantuan amounts, a mere $6 billion may seem small. With about 332 million Americans, $6 billion amounts to roughly $18 per person. For each household, it is about $46.

But when you recall how long the payment pause has been in effect—more than three years—these small monthly amounts grow to a sizable total. For the payment pause alone, the cumulative total is $640 for every man, woman, and child in the country. On average, each household’s share is a striking $1,700.

For most Americans, the pandemic is clearly over. But you wouldn’t know it by studying the pandemic student loan payment pause. There is a lawsuit pushing the Biden administration to end it, but if it extends as long as expected, payments won’t resume until late August, 2023. If that seems excessive, perhaps you can take some comfort knowing that your share of the remaining cost will only be another $70 or so, when borrowers once again resume payments on the loans they freely elected to take.

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