Student loan debt has risen to truly incredible heights in recent years, cresting at $1.6 trillion, the largest category of non-housing consumer debt, and with it has come calls and proposals for student debt relief. The Biden administration’s signature action on debt relief, forgiveness of up to $20,000 for borrowers making $125,000 or less, will be weighed by the Supreme Court in late February. While that proposal is of enormous importance, it is just a part of the total forgiveness—or more accurately, foregone student loan revenues—that will come if the Biden’s administration’s forgiveness proposal and his proposed income-driven repayment (IDR) changes are added to the enormous sums are already out the door.

AEI’s Student Debt Forgiveness Tracker, which I produced and is being released today, aims to capture foregone federal student loan revenues that have already happened as well those to come. Keeping track of these revenues is important for three reasons. First, forgiven debts are direct costs to the U.S. Treasury. Second, the revenue that has already been foregone totals to an enormous, and growing total. Third, future debt relief policies should be weighed in light of what the government has already spent.

AEI’s tracker covers the Trump and Biden administrations, and through this month, captures over $255 billion dollars. The largest portion of this is from interest that has not been accruing while Congress, and both Presidents Trump and Biden, maintained the pandemic pause on federal student loan payments and interest. It also includes $23 billion from Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), over $20 billion in Borrower Defense and Closed Schools discharges, nearly $10 billion for borrowers with Total and Permanent Disabilities, and more.

To be sure, not all of these forgiven dollars or foregone revenues are imprudent measures. However, we must evaluate and reckon with how much the country has already spent when evaluating new policy proposals or weigh maintaining current policies that increase this total. Indeed, the current total, at more than a quarter of a trillion, is so large it is difficult to comprehend. (Imagine a stack of $100 bills over 17 miles high; now imagine ten of them.)

The tracker also breaks out these totals in several ways, showing the various sources of loan forgiveness; the amounts authorized by Congress, President Trump, and President Biden; and—since much of the foregone revenue are justified by the pandemic—the totals by pandemic year. These breakouts are particularly instructive because they display how much forgiveness is occurring outside of congressional action and how much is occurring in the late stages, or perhaps after, the pandemic. The data is available for download, with sources for each entry and a complete methodology outlining my estimates of the costs from the payment pause.

This tracker does not include forgiveness costs or forthcoming foregone revenues. If the court allows Biden’s forgiveness program to go through, I will update the tracker as forgiveness occurs. I will do the same for coming forgiveness from IDR, PSLF, and any other sources as they happen. At a minimum, since Biden has promised to maintain the pause through the summer, you can expect the tracker to climb by roughly $6 billion a month through August.

Student debt relief is a real policy problem that requires judicious policy responses. I hope AEI’s Student Debt Forgiveness Tracker will help to inform those responses, curtail their excesses, and help the public keep track of both.

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