Legal experts interviewed by FOX News Digital expressed concern that President Joe Biden’s continued efforts to cancel student debt are pushing the boundaries of presidential executive power. There is.
Experts say the Biden administration’s pursuit of large-scale student loan forgiveness may be more politically motivated than legal, and could result in further legal issues. I was warned that there would be. Biden’s first student loan cancellation effort would cancel about $430 billion in federal student loan balances and cancel the debt of 20 million borrowers. It was struck down by the Supreme Court last year..
“At a fundamental level, Congress should be making these decisions,” Anastasia Borden, director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute, said in an interview on Fox News Digital. “These are decisions that involve billions of dollars in forgiveness and really threaten the viability of the entire student loan program, because we know that forgiveness programs like this tend to drive up the price of education. Because there is.”
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President Joe Biden and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on August 24, 2022. (Olivier Drierly/AFP via Getty Images)
Shortly after Biden’s original student loan forgiveness program was overturned by the Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision in June 2023, the president slammed the high court, accusing it of misinterpreting the Constitution. . The president said the ruling “will take thousands of dollars in potentially life-changing debt relief out of the hands of millions of Americans.”
However, the president has pursued a Plan B strategy since the decision. It is a phased approach that leverages and expands the Department of Education’s various existing financing programs. Biden pledged last week to “continue to pursue alternative avenues to get student loan relief to as many borrowers as possible as quickly as possible.”
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“They’re becoming more cautious,” said Michael Poon, an attorney at public interest law firm Pacific Legal Foundation. “Right now, they’re doing things through the normal administrative process, the normal rulemaking process. But many parts of student loan cancellation activities are still illegal as well. They’re still allowed by laws passed by Congress. Not.”
“It’s really just loan cancellation by another name,” Poon continued. “So they’re expanding forgiveness and saying that certain parts of the loan will be completely forgiven. A lot of those parts of the program are not yet authorized by statute. They’re saying a little bit more about that. We’re just being cautious,” and trying to keep it out of the courtroom. ”
President Biden’s administration has granted $143.6 billion in student loan forgiveness to nearly 4 million Americans in a phased approach to loan cancellation. (Fox News)
He noted that the Supreme Court’s decision last year emphasized that Congress “needs to really speak out” to approve a federal plan similar in size to Biden’s original student loan plan. did. According to Poon, highly political plans should be decided by Congress, the most responsive and most democratic branch of government.
“I think we should all be concerned whenever a president acts beyond the authority given to him by law. The rule of law protects freedom and prevents a country from becoming a dictatorship or tyranny. Because that’s what we do,” Poon continued. “I think the Biden administration’s loan cancellation efforts are an example of what happens when a president attempts to use legal authority to achieve ends not authorized by law.”
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Overall, the Biden administration has used the Department of Education’s wide-ranging programs to provide $143.6 billion in student loan forgiveness to approximately 4 million Americans, which represents a total of 1 trillion in student loan debt owed by Americans. That’s the better part of $700 billion.of The most recent cancellation was last week. When Education Secretary Miguel Cardona announced $5.8 billion in additional student loan debt relief for 77,700 borrowers.
The largest portion of the total, about $62.5 billion, was provided by the Department of Education’s so-called Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program. Under the President’s direction, the Department recently “amended” PSLF, significantly expanding its scope and eligibility for borrowers. Before these changes, only 7,000 borrowers benefited from PSLF.
“More than 100 times more borrowers are now eligible for PSLF than at the beginning of his administration,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said last week. “There is,” he said. (Reuters/Evelyn Hochstein)
Additionally, the Ministry of Education recently Save with the Education Worthwhile (SAVE) planis the latest type of income-driven repayment plan that allows borrowers to change their monthly student loan repayment obligations based on their income.
“Unlike what they did in August 2022, they didn’t proactively provide a lot of serious legal justification for this,” said Edwin Meese III, a legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Law and Justice Research. Jack Fitzhenry told FOX News Digital. “What the White House and the Department of Education have consistently said is, “Oh, we’re just righting past administrative mistakes so that borrowers get the credit they deserve.” .”
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“I think the problem is that what they seem to be doing is not necessarily correcting past mistakes,” Fitzhenry said. “The bigger issue from a legal perspective seems to be that President Biden is rethinking what qualified repayments are.” He said the decision had already been made by Congress, but the Biden administration is now , he said, in effect making its own rules.
Beth Akers, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies the economics of higher education, also warned that large-scale student debt relief would have far-reaching implications. For example, she said the program would likely benefit wealthy Americans and could further increase fees if universities ultimately decide that student debt will be canceled.
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He also said the administration’s approach to the issue is largely political, citing the president’s comments during the 2020 presidential campaign that mass cancellation of student loan debt was economically unfeasible. Mentioned.
Student debt relief activists participate in a rally at the U.S. Supreme Court on June 30, 2023. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
“I think Mr. Biden understands the economic challenges of creating student loan relief and why it doesn’t make complete economic sense,” she said. “But why did he ultimately propose a cancellation plan as part of his platform? He needs to join with other members of the Democratic Party who have decided that this is the status quo and support cancellation. It is.”
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“I think voters at this point have internalized the message that loans can or should be forgiven, and they want that. And I think that even a phased approach is not going to help the government to improve student enrollment. I think that could be a way to maintain the message that we’re canceling the loan.” The reason the loan gets featured in the newspapers and in the headlines is because it’s kind of drip, drip, drip. ”
The Ministry of Education did not respond to requests for comment.
