Biden student pardon would cost $400 billion 1:02
(CNN) --
President Joe Biden's order to pay off student loan debt for millions of Americans will cost an average of $30 billion per year over the next decade and $379 billion over the course of the program, according to one estimate. of costs of the Biden administration.
The administration's analysis of the overall cost roughly aligned with a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) economic analysis released this week that estimated the cost of the program at about $400 billion.
The differences were mainly due to differences in economic forecasts and the estimated number of borrowers who would use the program.
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The CBO analysis sparked an intense new round in the weeks-long battle between the White House and congressional Republicans over the size of the measure and how it is scored.
The White House estimate of the cost of the program over 10 years would be $305 million.
White House officials have strongly defended the merits of the proposal, which is structured in a way that would direct nearly 90% of debt relief to people earning less than $75,000 a year.
"Every dollar that we're going to record as a cost to the federal government is actually a benefit to low- and moderate-income families," a senior administration official said.
"We talk about the costs to the federal government, but what they really are is the fact that millions of people will be able to have a little more breathing room in their lives each year."
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The cost estimates, made over the course of the past few weeks by the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Education, mark the most comprehensive administrative analysis of Biden's decision last month to take the measure that could provide loan relief. student loans for as many as 40 million borrowers.
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But they also come as the White House moves to fend off strong Republican criticism -- and a handful of Democratic objections -- to the full cost of the program and lawsuits seeking to nullify it entirely.
The administration's cost estimate of an average of $30 billion per year over the next decade is part of an analysis of the reduction in cash flows to the government, which administration officials have pushed as a more needs to estimate the short-term effect of the total cost to the government of the action.