(LibertySons.org) – President Biden seems determined to “cancel” student loan debt—in reality, shifting it to taxpayers — and he’s made repeated efforts to push through schemes to do that. His latest attempt quickly ran into opposition and is now being challenged in a federal court. Eleven red states want to block the president’s plan, arguing that he’s overstepping his authority.
Unfinished Business
In 2022, Biden brought in the Saving on A Valuable Education (SAVE) repayment plan for student debt. At the same time, he announced a separate plan that would cancel up to $20,000 of debt for around 40 million Americans.
‘That plan would have cost taxpayers around $430 billion, and many conservatives were outraged. Six red states filed a lawsuit that ended up in front of the Supreme Court; while the justices threw out a separate case brought by two individuals who held student loans, ruling that they couldn’t show they’d been harmed by Biden’s plan, they ruled that the Biden administration had gone too far.
Chief Justice John Roberts said the 2003 Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act allowed the administration to make “modest adjustments” to student loan forgiveness programs, but Biden had “created a novel and fundamentally different” scheme. The Supreme Court blocked the loan cancellation plan –- but didn’t look at SAVE, because the details of that were still being worked out.
Now SAVE is up and running; the administration says almost eight million borrowers have already enrolled in it, and over five million of those have had their repayments cut to below $100 a month. In late March, the White House held a “day of action” to promote the program. Days later, 11 state attorneys general filed a new lawsuit aimed at blocking the plan. They’re arguing that it’s the same plan the Supreme Court threw out in 2022.
Is Biden Doing Exactly The Same Thing Again?
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach (R), who filed the suit, accused the Biden administration of being “completely brazen.” In a statement announcing the legal action, he said, “The law… does not allow President Biden to do [anything] he wants.”
Kobach’s suit argues that if Biden wants to make such a radical change to student loans, he needs to go through Congress — something the president is reluctant to do because, with the economy in its current state, many legislators will balk at saddling taxpayers with hundreds of billions of extra debt. Still, Biden seems determined to push on this issue, so it’s likely the Supreme Court will have to look at it again.
~Here’s to Our Liberty!
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