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While Biden has every right to draw attention to the high costs of college – and propose policy solutions – he had zero right to wave his presidential pen and declare billions in debt ‚forgiven.‘
On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court handed President Joe Biden and his administration a strong rebuke.
In a 6-3 decision, the conservative majority of the court struck down Biden’s controversial decision to cancel billions of dollars in student loan debt based only on his say so and without Congress‘ clear approval.
“…this leads the Court to conclude that ‘[t]he basic and consequential tradeoffs’ inherent in a mass debt cancellation program ‘are ones that Congress would likely have intended for itself,’” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts for the majority.
The president overstepped his authority in unilaterally declaring millions of Americans could benefit from up to $20,000 in student loan forgiveness, without going through Congress. This “generous” plan would have saddled taxpayers – the majority of whom have not gone to college themselves – with at least $400 billion in debt.
“This is a major question, obviously, because it costs so much and it is such a major policy, and using the major questions doctrine you have to have a clear statement, and we have the opposite,” says Caleb Kruckenberg, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, which filed the first lawsuit against the loan cancellation. “We have nothing like a clear statement that would authorize this.”
There’s much to say about the general unfairness of such random debt cancellation.
