Joseph Lawler reports for the Washington Examiner on the potential price tag for President Obama’s plan to bail out college students who are unable or unwilling to pay off student loans.

President Obama’s latest effort to ease repayment for student loans will benefit 2 million borrowers and cost the government $15.3 billion, according to new estimates from the administration.

The Department of Education, as detailed in a rule posted to the Federal Register website Wednesday, will expand eligibility for a program that caps federal student loan payments as a share of the borrower’s income and forgives debt after a period of time.

The program, called Pay as You Earn, or PAYE, is the most generous of several income-based repayment plans available to student borrowers and was introduced by the Obama administration in 2012. The Labor Department’s new rule, requested by Obama last year, expands the program retroactively for students who took out loans before 2007, as well as making other changes to eligibility criteria.

Now, those borrowers will be able to cap payments at 10 percent of their income and have remaining debts forgiven after 20 years.

Six million borrowers would become eligible for the sweetened terms under the proposed new rule, according to the Labor Department’s estimates. But only 2 million are expected to enter the program.

Updating the program would cost $8.3 billion for borrowers who took out loans in between 1994 to 2015 and $7 billion for people who will take out new loans from 2016 to 2025.