Money the government keeps
The budget office scores the repayment overhaul as saving 271 billion dollars over ten years, which is about 27 billion a year. It is one of the largest single savings in the law that contained it.
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Value
The stream is money the federal government collects instead of writing off, priced at the middle of the scale as public money always is. It is one end of a transfer and the borrowers are the other, which is why the same sum appears twice in this evaluation at two different weights. Nothing is added for the interest cost of the debt the government would otherwise carry, which is the same money under a later name. Nothing is added for the credibility of a lending programme that is repaid, which is a genuine good and is not measured by anything here. Whether the saving is used to reduce borrowing, cut taxes or spend elsewhere makes no difference to the weight. The value is the middle of the scale, the level this site uses for public money whatever it is later used for.
Impact
The Congressional Budget Office scores the new repayment plan at 271 billion dollars of savings over ten years, within a total student loan saving of about 315 billion for the law as a whole [3][4]. The plan itself is therefore 27.1 billion dollars a year, or 23.4 billion euro. Two changes produce it and they run in opposite directions: payments rise, because the plan takes a share of adjusted gross income from the first dollar rather than of income above 225 percent of the poverty line, and forgiveness is pushed from twenty years to thirty; against that the monthly write-off of unpaid interest costs the government money. The net is what the budget office scores and is what is used here, which is why the interest waiver does not appear as a separate gain anywhere in this evaluation. Public money carries the standard weight of 1.0. The Impact is the second largest here and it is the same figure as the largest, differing only in whose pocket it is measured in.
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| Federal saving from the new repayment plan [3] | over ten years, within a total student loan saving of about 315 billion | 271 billion dollars | |
| ÷ | Per year | over ten years | 27.1 billion dollars a year |
| ÷ | In euro, at the standard weight for public money exchange rate used throughout this evaluation | 1.16 dollars to the euro, weight 1.0 | 23.36 billion euro a year |
| ÷ | Normalised Impact scale of this evaluation | 5 billion euro a point | 4.67 |
Plausibility
A budget score is not a prediction about the world but an arithmetic exercise on a defined population under a defined statute, and this one is unusually well constrained. The counterfactual is the previous set of plans, which the office models from the same borrower data it uses for the new one. The chain from statute to cash flow contains one behavioural link that matters, which is which plan borrowers choose and whether they stay in it; the office models that from observed behaviour under the previous plans. The confounder is enrolment: a plan that costs more per month is one more borrowers leave, and a borrower who leaves and defaults pays less rather than more, which would cut the saving. That is named and is inside the office's own model rather than resolved by it. Reverse causation does not arise. The Plausibility is at the upper end of what a budget score can carry: the population, the formula and the horizon are fixed by statute, and only borrower behaviour is estimated.
Counterfactual: the previous set of income-driven plans, modelled from the same borrower data. Design: definitional for the formula — the payment schedule and the forgiveness horizon are statutory and the cash flow follows from them; only plan choice and persistence are behavioural. Confounder: borrowers leaving the plan or defaulting under higher payments, which would cut the saving; named and inside the office's model rather than resolved. Direction: not applicable. Ceiling: projection 6.0 binds — the number is a budget score, and a score is a projection however firmly the formula behind it is written.