In all the other Supreme Court news dropping, I didn’t have time to include the fact that the Supremes struck down Biden’s student loan forgiveness executive order.
The Supreme Court on Friday struck down President Biden’s student-loan-forgiveness program, finding that the statute the administration relied on in issuing the executive order does not give the secretary of education sweeping authority to forgive billions in student loans for tens of millions of Americans.
In the first of two cases the Court ruled unanimously that the individual plaintiffs lacked the standing to sue because they failed to establish harm. But in the second case, the Court ruled 6-3 that the state of Missouri had standing to sue and convincingly argued that President Biden lacked the authority to forgive student loans for entire categories of borrowers under the HEROES Act.
The Court’s precedent “requires that Congress speak clearly before a department secretary can unilaterally alter large sections of the American economy,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority.
“The Secretary asserts that the HEROES Act grants him the authority to cancel $430 billion of student loan principal. It does not,” Roberts goes on to write. “We hold today that the Act allows the Secretary to ‘waive or modify’ existing statutory or regulatory provisions applicable to financial assistance programs under the Education Act, not to rewrite that statute from the ground up.”
Roberts went on to cite a statement made by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), who in 2021 insisted that President Biden could not exercise executive authority in the name of “debt forgiveness,” to bolster the majority opinion.
“People think that the President of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not. He can postpone. He can delay. But he does not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress,” the California Democrat said during a press conference in July 2021.
Snip.
In August of last year, the Biden administration announced an executive order that would cancel up to $20,000 in federal student-loan debt for those making less than $125,000 in income per year. The administration invoked the HEROES Act to justify the plan. It was the same statute that was invoked by former president Donald Trump’s education secretary, Betsey DeVos, to pause student-loan payments as well as the accrual of interest early in the pandemic.
Notice: Pause. Not forgive. There’s a vast difference.
It was always a crazy idea that the President of the United States could unilaterally forgive someone’s debt. This goes against the entirety of the English/American legal tradition, where debts are considered enforceable unless discharged by an action of the courts (such as in bankruptcy).
Joe Biden is not a king, nor does the cabal backing and ruling through him have the power to unilaterally forgive debts. We should all be glad the Supreme Court squashed this insane idea.
Tags: debt, Democrats, Department of Education, education, Joe Biden, Regulation, Supreme Court
The anticipated progressive backlash after this decision dropped yesterday makes my blood boil, however much anticipated it might have been. The adolescent invective and basic disregard – not ignorance mind you – of elementary 5th grade civics is unforgivable. Yes, you’re reading it right, these people wish Biden was a king and a SCOTUS only existed if it decided matters favorably for them.
My anger is reciprocal and incandescent as the sun. I hate these people. They don’t care one bit about printing more dollars and stealing your money to get them off of fulfilling obligations they signed up for. Until we get to start herding them into urban crew-served weapon firing arcs and beaten zones nothing bad can happen to them I wouldn’t like.
I am completely done with half the country. Delenda est.
If Biden wishes to assume the debts and pay it off personally to the US Treasury, and then forgive it, I have no problem with that.
Individuals can forgive debts owed to them. They cannot forgive debts owed to someone else. And, BTW, debt forgiveness can be treated as income and is taxable. There are exceptions, but this ain’t one of ’em.
Given recent IRS enforcement “deals,” the words “taxable” and “Biden” probably don’t belong in the same sentence anymore.
@legalcounsel, re debt forgiveness. True, except I am told King Joe’s EO included language providing that the forgiven debt wouldn’t be includable in income. I am sure they got that authority from the same place they got the authority to forgive the debt in the first place.
As always with the left, they lie with their word choice.
If the loans would be forgiven, that means somebody wouldn’t get paid.
The lenders? Too much clout, plus this would incentivize them to get out of the industry. And if the government is the Lender of Last Resort, they sure as hell aren’t going to voluntarily go unpaid.
The universities? The gov’t isn’t going to let them go hungry. Call it professional courtesy from one group of bureaucrats to another.
No, I don’t believe for one second the plan was to forgive / cancel loans. Instead, it was an attempted Transfer Payment from the group D.C. always wants to screw (taxpayers) to a group that would likely repay in kind by always voting Democrat.
So why would they call it “forgiveness”? Because they lie, because it sounds better, and because it would keep the average Joe confused until it was too late.
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