Biden’s Student-Loan Power Grab

National Review Online

Wednesday, April 10, 2024

 

Last year, after the Supreme Court blocked President Biden’s plan to transfer billions in student debt from the people who borrowed the money to taxpayers who did not, Biden said he would “stop at nothing to find other ways” to achieve his unconstitutional goal. This promise, he has kept.

 

The White House announced its continuation of efforts to “cancel” student debt earlier this week. With the effort to read the HEROES Act, passed after 9/11, to allow blanket debt cancellation for millions having been rebuked by the Supreme Court, White House lawyers have scrounged around the statute books looking for other loopholes to sneak their preferred policies through.

 

It has instead made the Higher Education Act the object of its motivated reasoning and proposed multiple programs within the Department of Education to transfer student debt piecemeal. A few billion for public employees here, another few billion for people who graduated from bad programs there.

 

The administration’s announcement contains no total-cost estimate. It in many cases says that debt will be erased automatically, with no requirement that recipients even apply for it. And it’s just as unconstitutional as previous efforts.

 

Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Dakota, Ohio, and Oklahoma are suing the federal government over the SAVE plan, one part of the proposal. The lawsuit notes that in the decision that struck down Biden’s student-loan plans last year, the Court said the president can’t “unilaterally alter large sections of the American economy.” The estimated cost of that proposal was $430 billion. The estimated cost of this week’s proposal is at least $475 billion. If $430 billion was too large a section of the economy, then $475 billion certainly is as well.

 

That follows a coalition of eleven states, led by Kansas, which sued the federal government over the SAVE plan in March. “Last time Defendants tried this, the Supreme Court said that this action was illegal. Nothing since then has changed,” the lawsuit says.

 

The White House announcement repeatedly hedges with phrases such as “if implemented” and “if finalized as proposed,” suggesting that even the administration knows its plans have little chance of passing legal muster. So why keep putting them out?

 

It’s an election year, and while the announcement contained no cost estimate, it did contain travel plans for the president, vice president, second gentleman, and secretary of education to make appearances promoting the proposals.

 

There is hardly any segment of the American population less deserving of special favors from the federal government than college graduates, who have higher incomes, higher wealth, and lower rates of unemployment than the median American. But in an election campaign in which Democrats are afraid of slackened turnout among their university base, and after progressives online have been hyperventilating about the fake “student debt crisis” for several years, delivering the goods to this voting bloc seems to have taken priority over any sensible policy rationale.

 

The administration has blatantly disregarded the check on its power from the judicial branch, openly saying the Supreme Court would not stop it from doing what it wants. It has hardly made any attempt to pass a bill through Congress to accomplish its goal, which the Supreme Court said would be permissible.

 

Biden wants to portray himself as the guardian of democratic norms. If he ever wonders why many voters don’t take that line of argument too seriously, he has nobody to blame but himself.