Last year, Joe Biden came up with the most grandiose debt forgiveness plan in American history. The president, with a stroke of a pen, tried to eliminate almost a trillion dollars in student loan debt.
You might think that only Congress would be able to forgive the legal debts of American citizens. Not so, said Biden. Fortunately, the Supreme Court disagreed with him.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority, "The authority to 'modify' statutes and regulations allows the Secretary to make modest adjustments and additions to existing provisions, not transform them."
You can see the loophole the court created. You can drive a truck through it. "Modest adjustments and additions" means almost anything Biden wants it to mean. So far, Biden has waved his presidential magic wand and made about $137 billion in debt for more than 3 million borrowers disappear.
How "modest" is the "modest adjustment" of $137 billion in debt relief? Looking at it another way, Biden has been able to forgive about 25% of his initial plan of about $430 billion in debt relief. (That's only about half of what the plan would have cost taxpayers when you figure in interest and other charges.)
The authority to forgive that much debt doesn't exist. Biden just pulled it out of thin air. But the Supreme Court says that Biden has the authority to whittle away at the $1.6 trillion in student loan debt by making "modest adjustments."
A billion here. A billion there. Pretty soon we're talking about real money.
The Biden administration has been granting student loan forgiveness through these existing programs on a rolling basis since coming into office and has discharged a total of $127 billion for nearly 3.6 million people to date.
That’s more student loan forgiveness than was granted under any other administration – in part due to the Biden administration’s efforts to temporarily expand some debt relief programs and to correct past administrative errors made to borrowers’ student loan accounts. The actions draw a stark contrast with the Trump administration, which tried to limit some of these forgiveness programs and slowed the processing of some applications.
But Biden’s Republican critics say that at least some of his debt relief actions are illegal and are an attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court’s ruling.
One particularly egregious example of Biden lawlessness occurred in what administration officials refer to as "past administrative failures." That's government-speak for the Department of Education's failure to adequately track payments that borrowers made under certain government repayment programs.
Republicans have called out the plan for being illegal.
“The Biden administration is trampling the rule of law, hurting borrowers, and abusing taxpayers to chase headlines,” Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said in a statement at the time.
“Today’s celebration of counting no payments as payments is just the latest example of the ongoing delusion at the White House,” she added.
There was a suit filed by a conservative and libertarian coalition of legal groups including the Cato Institute and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. That lawsuit was dismissed because the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring legal action.
This has given the Biden administration a reprieve in having to legally justify their actions before a judge.
“There are several sources of authority that the department may be relying on, given its expansive authority over the federal student loan program generally and the income-driven repayment plans in particular,” said Abby Shafroth, co-director of advocacy at the National Consumer Law Center and director of its Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project.
"Several sources of authority"? Naming just one would be a good start.
Biden has deliberately misinterpreted one such authority. Government workers who were employed for ten years can apparently have some of their debt canceled.
President Joe Biden said that 44,000 of Friday’s approved borrowers were having their education debt wiped clean after 10 years of public service and that those borrowers included teachers, nurses, and firefighters. Almost 30,000 borrowers have worked toward repayment for at least 20 years but “never got the relief they earned through income-driven repayment plans,” he said in a statement.
They never got the relief because they never signed up for the program. But the administration says, "Your debt is forgiven, go in peace."
If only it could be that easy.
