Biden pledges new path to student loan relief after judicial setback
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President Biden said he would take “a new path” to provide relief for borrowers after the Supreme Court struck down his student loan forgiveness plan Friday, pledging to employ a legal workaround while also attacking Republicans who sued to block the original program. Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight “Today’s decision has closed one path, now we’re going to pursue another,” Biden said Friday from the White House, adding that the 6-to-3 Supreme Court ruling harmed millions of borrowers who had been expecting relief. “I’m never going to stop fighting for you. We’ll use every tool at our disposal to get you the student debt relief you need.”
The ruling marked the latest — and arguably most crushing — blow to one of Biden’s signature initiatives by the court’s powerful conservative bloc. The string of judicial setbacks has forced the president and his party to recalibrate their political messaging and search for alternative ways to reassure voters that Democrats can deliver on their promises.
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In addition to pitching a workaround to blunt the ruling’s impact on the millions of borrowers who had been offered as much as $20,000 in loan relief, Biden has begun to mount a response to the latest adverse ruling from the nation’s highest court. Noting that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has moved to roll back abortion access, affirmative action and civil rights, Biden has started to cast his reelection bid as a kind of bulwark against a Republican-led assault on what he has described as fundamental freedoms.
But the torrent of reactions from members of Biden’s party Friday indicated that Democrats are gearing up for a more robust — and direct — battle against a court that many of them believe has become an illegitimate outgrowth of the Republican Party.
“It’s deeply concerning that a group of MAGA Republicans has taken over the highest court of the land and are systematically rolling back our freedoms and opportunities for everyone to have a fair shot to succeed in this country,” Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) said in a statement. “This fight is not over.”
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After the court ruled along ideological lines that the president overstepped his authority in using a 2003 law to offer roughly $400 billion in loan forgiveness without Congress’s approval, Biden announced he would instead attempt to use a different law — the 1965 Higher Education Act — to offer relief to borrowers.
The president did not offer many details about how the new plan would work, saying only that it would allow Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to “compromise, waive or release loans under certain circumstances.”
On Friday, the Education Department initiated a negotiated rulemaking process to create a regulation granting student debt relief. The process could take months and would not produce a final rule until next year at the earliest.
While economist Marshall Steinbaum said he is pleased that Biden is using the 1965 law, Steinbaum added that the administration is “kicking the can down the road yet again” by going through the rulemaking process.
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“They don’t need a rulemaking, and the court’s ruling today already suggests this lengthy, drawn-out process will come to grief just as the last one did,” said Steinbaum, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Utah. “Instead, they should just cancel the debt, tell all the borrowers their balances are reduced and let [Chief Justice] John Roberts reimpose them.”
Lanae Erickson, who heads social policy at the centrist think tank Third Way, worries the Biden administration is making a risky bet by using the Higher Education Act to achieve debt relief and could undermine other debt forgiveness programs if the Supreme Court strikes down the effort. The 1965 law gives the Education Department the authority to cancel loans held by public servants, defrauded students and disabled borrowers, all of whom could be targeted if the court rejects the scope of the authority, she said.
Biden said twice during his remarks that the new approach would “take longer” than the original effort. He added that while student loan repayment — paused more than three years ago due to the pandemic — would continue as planned in the fall, the White House would initiate a 12-month period when borrowers would be shielded from falling into default.
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White House aides have also pointed to other student loan initiatives that were not challenged in the courts, noting that Biden has helped borrowers by increasing Pell Grants, a form of financial aid for low- and middle-income students, and proposing an income-driven repayment plan that could reduce monthly payments and also provide some loan forgiveness.
The president largely steered clear of attacking the Supreme Court during his remarks Friday, even as several members of his party accused the conservative majority of undermining democracy and threatening basic freedoms.
While Democrats in last year’s midterm elections found success in running against the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, they have struggled to halt a rightward shift on a range of issues including abortion, guns, climate change and civil rights.
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Republican-led states have continued to enact antiabortion measures this year, and the White House has only been able to take limited steps to counter the tide of new bans and restrictions. Republican presidential candidates, including former president Donald Trump — who appointed three of the justices on the Supreme Court — have celebrated the latest rulings and pledged to further entrench the court’s conservative majority if elected next year.
Biden has stopped short of endorsing some of the more aggressive measures some in his party have called for to overhaul a judiciary that has undercut several of his promises and priorities.
The court’s decision Thursday outlawing race-conscious admissions programs in colleges, for example, marked the second time in just over a year that the conservative majority has abandoned a long-standing precedent on such a polarizing issue.
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When asked whether the Supreme Court constituted a “rogue court,” Biden responded Thursday by saying, “This is not a normal court.”
Many liberal lawmakers and activists said they believe the court has indeed gone rogue — and have called on Biden to act accordingly. Noting how Republicans held a court seat vacant for about 10 months at the end of President Barack Obama’s term, citing the 2016 election, and then helped Trump quickly fill a vacancy just weeks before the 2020 election, activists have called on Democrats to embrace a similar sense of urgency.
Not doing so, they say, will only expose the party to more detrimental rulings on a range of issues. And many liberal Democrats — including some of the young people who had hoped to benefit from Biden’s student loan relief program — are calling for more aggressive countermanding measures, including expanding the Supreme Court or imposing term limits on justices.
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“People don’t have to live under constant fear of the Supreme Court,” Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) wrote on Twitter. “We can’t sit on our hands while these justices carry out the bidding of right wing organizations. Expand the Court.”
The president conceded Thursday that the current court would probably continue to issue adverse rulings, but reiterated his opposition to adding justices to the nine-member body.
“I think they may do too much harm,” Biden said of the court during an interview with MSNBC. “But I think, if we start the process of trying to expand the court, we’re going to politicize it, maybe forever, in a way that is not healthy.”
Instead, the president and some of his allies have begun to frame the 2024 election as an existential battle to preserve fundamental rights — not only from a Republican opponent but also from powerful jurists with lifetime appointments.
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Despite setbacks in the 2022 midterms, several Republican candidates appear eager to engage in a political debate over the courts, an institution that has long animated conservative voters because of its far-reaching impact on cultural issues.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has pledged to shift the court even further to the right if his presidential campaign is successful, reminding voters that he would have as many as eight years in power to select justices — while Trump, the GOP front-runner, would only have four.
While Biden has characterized the proposed relief — which the White House says would have predominantly benefited people making less than $75,000 per year — as a program aimed at the most deserving, Republicans have tried to cast it as a regressive tax. Several cheered the Supreme Court ruling Friday, saying that in addition to being unconstitutional, Biden’s plan was a “giveaway” to people who went to college at the expense of those who did not have the privilege.
“Joe Biden’s massive trillion-dollar student loan bailout subsidizes the education of elites on the backs of hard-working Americans,” Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice president and a candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said in a statement.
Biden had sought to structure the program in a way that would reduce the racial wealth gap, one of the president’s promises during his 2020 campaign.
The administration proposed a plan last year that would eliminate up to $10,000 of student debt for borrowers who earn up to $125,000 annually, or up to $250,000 for married couples. Those who received Pell Grants would be eligible for an additional $10,000 in forgiveness. The program, which millions of people had already signed up for, would have impacted more than 40 million borrowers, with minority students disproportionately benefiting from the Pell Grant provision.
The demise of the program is a major setback to Biden’s racial equity agenda, said Denise Smith, senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a liberal think tank.
“The Biden administration has to find new ways — whether through executive action or working with Congress — to help families climb out from under the burdens of debt that are crushing so many Black and brown people’s ability to accrue wealth,” she said in an email.
Biden acknowledged the sense of frustration he felt Friday as the court struck down one of his most far-reaching programs.
“I know there are millions of Americans, millions of Americans in this country, who feel disappointed and discouraged or even a little bit angry at the court’s decision today on student debt,” Biden said. “And I must admit, I do, too.”
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Source: The Washington Post
