Progressive proposals for total student debt “cancelation” (aka transfer to taxpayers) have long been plagued by a salient criticism: they mostly help the affluent. One study even found that full student debt cancelation would help the top 20% of earners 6x more than the bottom 20%. President Biden wanted to ensure that his executive action “canceling” $10,000-$20,000 in debt per borrower wouldn’t fall into this same hypocritical pattern, so he added some income constraints.

It didn’t work. Biden’s costly and arguably illegal student loan bailout will still mostly end up benefitting higher earners, a new analysis from the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget confirms.

Their experts ran the numbers on Biden’s final proposal, including the income caps, and concluded that it will still offer 57% to 65% of its benefits to the top half of income earners. (And they say that even this might be an underestimate).