A strong rebuke by the highest court of the land would make most of us pause and reconsider our actions.
Not Joe Biden.
The president essentially told the U.S. Supreme Court to get lost after it decisively told him late last month that his unilateral plan to cancel hundreds of billions in student loan debt (at taxpayer expense) was an egregious overreach of his office. Simply put: It was unconstitutional.
The same day the ruling came down, Biden announced what he would do next − essentially the same thing.
Not a joke, as the president likes to say.
In fact, the president seems confused about who told him he couldn’t proceed with this massive loan “forgiveness.”
According to a statement from the White House about Biden’s “new” plan: “No President has fought harder for student debt relief than President Biden, and he’s not done yet. President Biden and Vice President (Kamala) Harris will not let Republican elected officials succeed in denying hardworking Americans the relief they need.”
Republican elected officials? It’s unclear who Biden is talking about since it was the Supreme Court that told him he couldn’t proceed with wiping out more than $400 billion in debt without Congress’ approval.
Even though Biden never had the authority to promise millions of borrowers he could magically make their debt disappear, he did it anyway, and he’s doing it again without a legal path for him to succeed.
Americans with student loan debt should be angry at Biden. Yet his messaging against big, bad Republicans appears to be resonating.
It’s all about 2024, not student loans
Since Biden first announced his original loan forgiveness plan in August, the political play has been about winning the youth vote – something Democrats really need heading into the next presidential election.
A new poll by The Generation Lab, which surveyed college students and recent graduates, found that the vast majority blame the Supreme Court and Republicans for the fact that they still have student loan debt. The president who promised to do something he couldn’t legally do? He’s off the hook, at least for now, with younger voters.
And you can be sure that Biden and his administration plan to use those young people as pawns by harnessing their frustration to get them to vote in 2024.
SCOTUS issues student loan decision:Supreme Court tosses Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan where it belongs
So what’s the new plan? Biden says he will now seek student loan cancellation through the Higher Education Act. Although the law grants the Education secretary some discretion over loan modification, it’s a huge stretch to interpret this to mean the executive branch can take such a sweeping action.
It was Biden’s overreach in flexing executive power that got him in trouble with the Supreme Court this year. He tried to use the HEROES Act, a law passed during the 9/11-era to help ease student debt burdens for those serving the country, to erase debt for millions of Americans who clearly didn’t fit under Congress’ intentions when it passed the legislation in 2003.
“The president is basically just doubling down on what he tried to do initially,” says Beth Akers, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and expert in the economics of higher education. “I don’t think that there’s any more sense in the legal community that this is a more appropriate means for the administration taking this action unilaterally.”
In going through the Higher Education Act, Biden will have to slog through the rulemaking process – something he skirted with the other law – which could easily take months or even years. But from a political perspective, Biden just needs to show he’s “working on it” until November 2024, even though he must know his actions will merit similar court battles.
“I expect that this will face legal challenges in the same way and may ultimately be stopped in the same way that the first attempt was stopped,” Akers says.
In the meantime, costly meddling continues
While Biden’s latest legally implausible attempt at loan cancellation plays out, he will rely on other measures to appease borrowers he’s encouraged to feel angry and entitled.
The first is a greatly expanded income-driven repayment plan to help lower-income borrowers − a plan Biden calls “affordable.” It may be a boon to some debt holders, but it’s certainly not affordable to taxpayers who have to foot the bill for the president’s “generosity.”
Biden is trying to sell ‘Bidenomics.’But Americans can’t afford the president’s agenda.
Second, the Biden administration continues to slow roll the restart of student loan repayments, which have remained frozen and interest free for the past three years. The payments are expected to start in September (as mandated recently by Republicans in Congress), yet he’s finding ways around that.
Biden’s giving borrowers a year-long “on-ramp” to start payments without fear of dings to their credit rating if they don’t pay right away.
These two actions combined are expected to cost about $500 billion – more than the original loan forgiveness plan.
Spending money the country doesn’t have is integral to “Bidenomics.” That’s bad enough. The continued brazen (and unconstitutional) effort to buy votes with sweeping loan cancellation is even worse.
Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at USA TODAY. Contact her at ijacques@usatoday.com or on Twitter: @Ingrid_Jacques
