Bipartisan effort to help service members qualify for loan forgiveness

WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) — Millions of borrowers benefit from Public Service Loan Forgiveness, a program to forgive federal student loans.

“One of the populations that the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program helps is, service members, military service members,” Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) said.

Courtney says military members aren’t getting full credit for their deployed service. He blames current rules and poor communication between the Departments of Education and Defense for preventing a full discharge of the loans.

“The data shows that military service members are really struggling in terms of getting discharges done in a timely fashion,” Courtney said.

Courtney introduced a bipartisan bill to ensure service members have their service period counted toward student loan forgiveness.

“You’re serving overseas wearing the uniform of this country, those months of service will continue to be counted towards the ten-year goal of getting to, a full discharge,” Corutney said.

Courtney said if this bill becomes a reality, nearly 200,000 service members would benefit from this change.

“It’s going to help, obviously, in retention to make sure that service members will have that burden lifted in terms of monthly payments. And it also will help in terms of recruitment,” Courtney said.

Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) is the co-sponsor on the bill and in a statement, he said “Military enrollment numbers have been down in recent years, and we should continue to incentivize service in our nation’s military, not make it harder for men and women to serve.”

Courtney expects this bill to garner more support.

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