Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Caleb Kruckenberg (courtesy Pacific Legal Foundation)
Posted on 02/21/2023 8:22:43 PM PST by SeekAndFind
President Joe Biden’s sweeping plan to partially forgive student loans will likely receive a cool reception when the Supreme Court hears challenges to the program on Feb. 28, legal experts told The Epoch Times.
Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Caleb Kruckenberg (courtesy Pacific Legal Foundation)
Biden introduced the plan in August 2022 in a move that critics decried as a constitutionally dubious attempt to shore up Democrats’ fortunes ahead of the November 2022 congressional elections. While the Congressional Budget Office said the plan could cost about $400 billion, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania estimates the price tag could exceed $1 trillion.
The student loan relief program is premised on the existence of the emergencies the Trump administration declared in March 2020 to combat the COVID-19 virus. The national emergency and the public health emergency enabled federal agencies to exercise expansive powers in managing the government’s pandemic response.
In a move that could undermine the government’s legal arguments in the pending court cases, Biden’s Office of Management and Budget said in a Jan. 30 press release (pdf) that it would extend the soon-to-expire emergencies to May 11 “and then end both emergencies on that date.”
The federal government put a pause on student loan payments and interest during the recent pandemic but then claimed in 2022 that the pandemic gave it emergency authority under the law to proceed with partial loan forgiveness. Republicans, who took the majority in the House of Representatives in January, say the emergencies aren’t justified and should be ended sooner.
About 26 million people reportedly applied under the program before courts blocked it last year. Of those 26 million, 16 million were said to have been approved before the government stopped accepting applications.
The Department of Education claims that it has the authority to move forward with the debt relief proposal, which would cancel as much as $20,000 in loan principal for 40 million borrowers, under the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003 (HEROES Act).
But lawmakers involved in the passage of the HEROES Act say the statute was enacted after the 9/11 terror attacks to provide student loan relief to military service members and their families and was never intended to be used to cancel debts en masse.
The court is scheduled to hear two related cases dealing with the program, Biden v. Nebraska (court file 22-506) and Department of Education v. Brown (court file 22-535), back-to-back on Feb. 28.
The Biden student loan forgiveness plan is flatly unconstitutional, attorney Caleb Kruckenberg of the Pacific Legal Foundation, a national nonprofit public interest law firm, told The Epoch Times.
He said Biden unveiled the debt relief program not long after the pandemic “was over anyway [and] we all sort of understood what that meant.”
Kruckenberg said that even if the Biden administration were successful at the Supreme Court, which he doubts, their stated authority would expire May 11.
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Forcing people to pay someone else’s debt is always a ‘little problematic’ and quite unconstitutional, I’d hope.
Yah, but...
How many Divisions does the Chief Justice command?
(We’re VERY close to hearing that retort, I believe!)
I think it might hinge on the May 11th date—the “end” of the pandemic. The law references war or a national emergency only (to modify student loan terms.)
The hard workers always lose.
The government shouldn’t be in the school loan business in the first place.
Does this mean those 16 million will remain approved?
Of course the election distortion damage has already been done.
…… without congressional approval, of course it is unconstitutional.
It’s working for Ukraine. Short of a political revolution, will we ever get out from under other country’s debts?
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