For the umpteenth time, the Biden administration has brazenly conjured up another plan to circumvent the Supreme Court and unilaterally forgive millions in student loan debt. Imagine the hew and cry if Donald Trump had shown such indifference to the rule of law when he sat in the Oval Office.
The latest version of President Joe Biden’s great student loan giveaway, courtesy the American taxpayer, bestows the Education Department with the power to forgive outstanding obligations when “a hardship is likely to impair the borrower’s ability to fully repay the loan or render the costs of continued collection of the loan unjustified.”
Department officials told The New York Times that this “could include things like surprise medical bills, burdensome child care or elder care costs and financial losses from a natural disaster.” No word on the cost of the plan — which would be in the hundreds of millions, at a minimum — but taxpayers can be certain that the government will operate under a liberal definition of hardship. The Times reports that the process could include a “holistic assessment” of an applicant’s finances, whatever that means.
Republicans will certainly challenge the new rule — and, if history is any indication, they are likely to prevail. Last year, the Supreme Court tossed out White House efforts to wipe away billions in student debt, ruling that the executive branch doesn’t have the authority to write law.
“The question here,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the 6-3 majority, “is not whether something should be done; it is who has the authority to do it.”
Since then, two federal courts have blocked subsequent administration efforts to bend federal statutes in service to loan amnesty. In August, an appeals court panel ruled that Biden overstepped his authority with a proposed regulation that lowered payment caps. Last month, a federal court killed a separate plan that canceled accrued interest for 25 million borrowers.
As The Wall Street Journal put it, “Courts are playing whack-a-mole with the administration’s debt write-offs that end-run Congress, which never authorized such broad-based debt forgiveness.”
All this is particularly ironic given progressive hysteria over a potential second Trump term and concerns that he’ll ignore constitutional guardrails. Meanwhile, as the White House is intent on disregarding the nation’s highest court, Senate Democrats make plans for ending the filibuster, packing the Supreme Court and knee-capping the justices by making it more difficult for them to check congressional indifference to the Constitution.
What’s a bigger threat to democracy and the nation’s institutions than that?
