Free Republic

The Biden administration has abolished the federal student-loan program, at least if a “student-loan program” is one in which students borrow money and then eventually repay it. What’s being erected in its stead is a scheme that’s rife with moral hazard, seemingly designed to inflate college costs, and best described as a “student-fraud program”—in which students borrow money, promise to repay it, and then … don’t. Biden’s loan-forgiveness shenanigans leapt into public consciousness when he tried to farcically read the 2003 HEROES Act to allow him to shovel $500 billion in loan “forgiveness” to his highly educated base and stick...

On June 30, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Biden v. Nebraska, the case that challenged the legality of the president’s executive order cancelling federal student-loan payments for millions of borrowers. In their ruling, the Court’s majority held that the president had no authority to declare such a cancellation. The statute that the administration had relied upon, the HEROES Act, could not be stretched, the Court decided, to mean that the president had been empowered to make a sweeping loan-forgiveness decree. Nor does anything in the Constitution give the president such authority. Thus, Biden’s loan-forgiveness plan was struck...

As U.S. President Joe Biden’s stalled student loan forgiveness plan means repayment is set to resume on Oct. 1, a growing number of student loan borrowers are claiming they either cannot or will not pay the debt back. In fact, an August survey from student and education resource publication Intelligent.com revealed that 62% of respondents said they are considering boycotting loan payments in the fall as almost half of them doubt they will be able to afford those payments. Twenty-nine-year-old Shahem Mclaurin took to TikTok to ask hard questions about whether borrowers like him should protest what many view as...

A Nashville lawyer found a novel way to beat student loans: a lawsuit. In subsequent tweets, Manookian shared the basic steps others could follow to get their student debt wiped through the legal system. “This isn’t about loan forgiveness,” Manookian told The Post. “It’s about holding these companies to the very same contract that they insist debtors comply with.” Manookian, who attended Vanderbilt University Law School, told The Post he took out two loans from JP Morgan and Bank One for $60,000 to pay for his education, chipping away at his students loan debt for “upwards of a decade.” A...

The Supreme Court struck down President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan on Friday, a measure that would have wiped out nearly half a trillion dollars in debt for millions of Americans. The decision will impact the nearly 700,000 Wisconsinites that have federal student loan debt -- a total that adds up to more than $20 billion. Sid Bagley is one of those people who took out a federal student loan. He went back to school at age 45 to get a business administration degree and better himself. “I hated my job so much I made the initiative to go back...

The Supreme Court is poised to hear back-to-back oral arguments for two student loan-related cases on Tuesday, in what could be the final hurdle for the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness plan. In August, President Joe Biden announced a program that would forgive up to $20,000 in debt for borrowers with federally held student loans, impacting more than 40 million borrowers. Applications for the program opened in October, but a federal judge in Texas put the program on hold in November, ruling that the program was “unlawful.” In both of the cases heading to the Supreme Court, Biden v. Nebraska—a...

The 8th Circuit US Appeals Court blocked Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program on Friday afternoon. The court granted an emergency stay barring the discharge of any student debt until the court decides on a request for a longer-term injunction. Reuters reported: A U.S. appeals court on Friday temporarily blocked President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel billions of dollars in college student debt, one day after a judge dismissed a Republican-led lawsuit by six states challenging the loan-forgiveness program. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted an emergency stay barring the discharge of any student debt under the program...

PHOENIX — Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Biden administration to stop its "illegal" student loan cancellation program. The lawsuit challenges the president’s authority, through the Department of Education, to cancel more than $500 billion in student loan debt without congressional approval. “This mass debt forgiveness program is fundamentally unfair, unconstitutional, and unwise,” said Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich. “The question Americans need to be asking is why college costs so much in the first place?” Under the student debt cancellation program, the administration plans to cancel $10,000 to $20,000 of student loan debt for...

When it comes to President Biden’s sweeping plan to forgive thousands of dollars in federal student loans, a majority of New Yorkers support the move, according to a fresh Siena College poll. The poll found that by 56 to 33 percent, New Yorkers supported the plan, which would forgive up to $20,000 in debt for those who received Pell Grants with loans held by the Department of Education.Non-Pell Grant recipients would have $10,000 in student debt canceled.Among those polled, 29 percent think Biden’s plan goes too far, while 21 percent said it doesn’t go far enough. Thirty-nine percent said the...

The Biden administration and Republican opponents of mass student debt cancellation appear headed for a legal confrontation with hundreds of billions of dollars at stake just weeks before the November midterm elections. GOP state attorneys general, conservative groups and federal lawmakers are laying the groundwork to challenge President Biden’s executive action to cancel up to $20,000 of debt for most of the 40 million people with federal student loan debt. Would-be plaintiffs can’t take action until the administration makes a formal move toward cancellation, such as releasing an application for loan forgiveness or wiping out the balances of a first...

In The Student Loan Giveaway is Much Bigger Than You Think I argued that the Biden student loan plan would incentivize students to take on more debt and incentivize schools to raise tuition with most of the increased costs being passed on to taxpayers through generous income based repayment plans. Adam Looney at Brookings takes a deep dive into the IDR plan and concludes that it’s even worse than I thought. Here are some of Looney’s key points: As recently as 2017, CBO projected that student loan borrowers would, on average, repay close to $1.11 per dollar they borrowed (including...

Joe Biden was elected partially as someone who could bring stability and unity back to the nation. Those aspects were never threatened under Trump. We had peace and prosperity, and if there were any scintilla of divisiveness—it would be because the liberal media spewed pervasive lies about Trump. Exhibit A would be the Russian collusion hoax. In two years, Biden’s incompetence and utter failure to do even the rudimentary duties of the president's office have been explicitly shown. The media has brought up his age, the slothful attitude at times, and the White House staff’s near-24-hour duty of clarifying the...

Wiping out 10k in student debt is not the most expensive part of the Biden student loan program. Most Federal student loans are now eligible for an income based repayment plan, under these plans students pay a small percentage of their “discretionary” income, say 10%, and then after a fixed number of years the debt is wiped off the student’s books. At first glance these plans don’t seem crazy, but as Matt Bruenig points out they create perverse incentives. Under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, law graduates that go on to work in the public sector, which is...

Every day it gets harder to keep up with the accelerating lawlessness of the Biden Administration. The basic strategy is, just do whatever the left wants, using all the vast powers and resources of the federal government, and dare anyone to try to stop you. To mention just a few recent examples, one day it’s a multi-trillion-dollar transformation of the energy economy without Congressional authorization (perhaps slowed down by the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia v. EPA); the next day it’s holding meetings to pressure tech giants like Twitter and Facebook to censor the speech of political opponents; next...

Yesterday morning, President Joe Biden revealed his administration’s plan to forgive billions of dollars in student loans. According to a White House Fact Sheet, the plan will forgive up to $20,000 in federally held debt for students who received Pell Grants and up to $10,000 for students who did not. Forgiveness applies to individuals earning less than $125,000, with an income ceiling of $250,000 for married couples. Additionally, the Covid-era pause on student-loan payments will be extended until December 31, 2022. The plan also allows borrowers with undergraduate loans to cap repayment at just five percent of monthly income. Critics...

Well, he did it. Waving his baronial wand, President Biden on Wednesday canceled student debt for some 40 million borrowers on no authority but his own. This is easily the worst domestic decision of his Presidency and makes chumps of Congress and every American who repaid loans or didn’t go to college. The President who never says no to the left did their bidding again with this act of executive law-making, er, breaking. The government will cancel $10,000 for borrowers making less than $125,000 a year and $20,000 for those who received Pell grants. The Administration estimates that about 27...

President Biden will soon decide on “canceling” up to $10,000 in student loans for millions of borrowers as the Aug. 31 deadline nears, when loan payments are scheduled to begin again after a pause implemented to help young professionals cope with the pandemic-related economic downturn. Internal White House discussions are considering extending the pandemic-related pause in addition to canceling $10,000 for millions of borrowers below a certain income threshold, according to The Washington Post.

President Joe Biden has said he's "taking a hard look" at canceling hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan debt—a decision his advisers believe would be "a complete disaster" for the Democratic Party in the midterms."There are a lot of people very close to the president who privately understand that this is a complete disaster for them," the Washington Post‘s James Hohmann said on the Bulwark Podcast. The president's aides have attributed the political misjudgment to influence from leftwing Democrats including Sen. Raphael Warnock (Ga.) and Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. Both are seeking high turnout from the party's...

As a current college student, I can attest that attending college today is expensive and, for many students, impossible without taking out a loan. Borrowing money means taking on the responsibility of repaying it. Multiple student loan forgiveness plans have been proposed by Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and President Joe Biden, which would allow students to forgo their financial responsibilities. President Biden plans to forgive at least $10,000 worth of loan debt for every student making less than $125,000 per year after college–more than $1 trillion total. But there are no other details yet. How does...

The Biden administration said it is approving 18,000 loan forgiveness claims from former students of ITT Technical Institute, a chain that closed in 2016 after being dealt a series of sanctions by the Obama administration. The new loan discharges will clear more than $500 million in debt.