RELENTLESS: Biden finds route around SCOTUS for student loan relief
A conservative Supreme Court is not going to hold President Joe Biden back when his empathy and priorities are on the line.
Biden wants to provide student loan relief, and he’s going to find a way to do it — no matter what the Supreme Court says.
And no, Republicans are wrong. Biden is not “defying” the Supreme Court.
Today, Biden announced that over 800,000 people who have been paying student loan debts for 20 or 25 years (depending on when they took the loan out) will have their debt canceled.
CNBC describes the dynamic well in its report:
“The relief is a result of fixes to the student loan system’s income-driven repayment plans. Under those repayment plans, borrowers get any remaining debt canceled by the government after they have made payments for 20 years or 25 years, depending on when they borrowed, and their loan and plan type.”
The plan forgives $39 billion in loans and puts that money straight back into the economy.
Other than the desire to help people saddled by ridiculous tuition prices that required absurd loans, this program bears no relation to the action struck down by the Supreme Court.
It works for a great GOP meme: “Biden ignores the SCOTUS!”. Of course, the Republicans are trying to take the focus away from the good done.
But the Supreme Court struck down set amounts, such as the $10,000 under the HEROES Act, which allows the Secretary of Education to lower or forgive loans for people who have undergone a war or a national emergency.
It was used during 9-11.
Biden cited COVID and the student loan problem itself as the national emergency to use the Act to forgive the set amount for everyone with a student loan. The Supreme Court said, “No.”
But in this situation, the government forgives far less money (though not negligible) by correcting faults inherent in the system, where the amounts calculated did not follow certain criteria already in the law.
Again, as CNBC describes:
“’For far too long, borrowers fell through the cracks of a broken system that failed to keep accurate track of their progress towards forgiveness,’ U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement.”
“To bring people over the line for forgiveness, the Biden administration counted payments for borrowers who’d paused their payments in certain deferments and forbearances and those who’d made partial or late payments.”
This is purely an executive action to “fix” issues that didn’t comply with the law as it exists (due to a poor system) and presents no issue for the court.
In other words, the inherent “goodness” in Joe Biden, the man who has more empathy in a hair that fell off his comb than Donald Trump, found a way to at least start giving some student debt relief.
Note the word “start,’ because there’s no indication that President Biden is anywhere near finished. He clearly believes that massive student loan debt is holding this country back.
This column is based primarily on original reporting done by Annie Nova at CNBC and my own reading of the Supreme Court decision.
I can be contacted at jasonmiciak@gmail.com and on Twitter @JasonMiciak
Editor’s note: This is an opinion column that solely reflects the opinions of the author.
