More than 150,000 borrowers are receiving emails from President Joe Biden on Wednesday stating that all or part of their “federal student loans will be forgiven” in what is really a transfer of the debt to the American taxpayer.
Politico reported that on Wednesday, the Biden administration was set to blast out emails to some 153,000 loan borrowers, who will see $1.2 billion transferred out of their collective debts under his Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan.
In the letter, the politically vulnerable president takes credit for the “forgiveness” in the first sentence.
“Congratulations—all or a portion of your federal student loans will be forgiven because you qualify for early loan forgiveness under my Administration’s SAVE Plan,” the email, published by Politico, reads.
“From day one of my Administration, I vowed to fix student loan programs so higher education can be a ticket to the middle class—not a barrier to opportunity,” the letter states. Biden adds he hopes “this relief gives you a little more breathing room.”
The document includes the phrase “SHARE WHAT THIS RELIEF MEANS TO YOU,” which links to a studentaid.gov page that is not yet accessible.
“The borrowers receiving relief are the first to benefit from a SAVE plan policy that provides debt forgiveness to borrowers who have been in repayment after as little as 10 years and took out $12,000 or less in student loans,” the White House stated in a press release. Per Politico, Biden will speak Wednesday about the move at an event in Los Angeles.
According to Biden’s letter, the Department of Education will inform loan servicers if borrowers are eligible, and after the servicer applies the “forgiveness,” they will announce it to the borrowers.
The Biden administration previously crafted a $430 billion student debt transfer plan, which was ultimately struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2023, as Breitbart News Senior Editor Joel Pollack reported at the time:
The plan was criticized for attempting to evade Congress’s power to control spending and debts, for prioritizing elite college graduates over working-class Americans who chose not to go to college, and for punishing those who paid off their loans or chose fields of study more likely to lead to finding good jobs.
As NPR notes, the SAVE plan “has become a key vehicle for President Biden” after the high court ruled against his nearly half-a-trillion-dollar debt write-off.
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| Recent History
Supreme Court strikes down Biden’s costly student loan relief plan
June 30, 2023
The Supreme Court rejected President Joe Biden’s costly student loan forgiveness plan on Friday after a pair of challenges contested its legality.
The high court handed down two opinions surrounding lawsuits against Biden’s plan to wipe away $400 billion in student debt. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the 6-3 majority opinion in the case Biden v. Nebraska, with the liberal justices in the minority.
The decision comes as a nearly three-year moratorium on student loan payments will soon end. Interest will start accruing again on Sept. 1, and payments are due beginning in October.
For Biden, the decision marks a stark setback for his agenda. He has vowed to help borrowers “crawl out from under that mountain of debt.”
Roberts’s majority relied on two main grounds. He said the statutory grant and authority to the secretary of education to “waive or modify” loan terms cannot be extended this far. He also said the massive debt cancellation program requires clear congressional authorization.
“The Secretary asserts that the HEROES Act grants him the authority to cancel $430 billion of student loan principal. It does not,” Roberts wrote.
For months, the high court has been toiling over the constitutionality of Biden’s plan after six Republican-led states sued and alleged the president exceeded his legal authority when he implemented the program last August to cancel up to $20,000 in debt for people holding federal student loans.
Biden used executive power under the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003, commonly known as the HEROES Act, citing the COVID-19 pandemic as the basis, though the health emergency ended on May 11. The case, argued in February, asked whether the HEROES Act gives the secretary of education the power to grant federal student loan forgiveness.
In the first case challenging the loan plan, Nebraska, along with five other states, argued the 20 million borrowers who would have their entire loans erased would get a “windfall,” leaving them better off than before the pandemic. The state challenge was successful in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, which put the plan on hold last October.
In the second case, Department of Education v. Brown, two student loan borrowers who did not qualify for all or part of the relief sued the Biden administration. The high court ruled unanimously that these plaintiffs lacked the legal standing to bring a lawsuit.
While the pair of borrowers technically lost their bid at the high court, the Job Creators Network Foundation, which brought the case on their behalf, celebrated the high court striking down the costly loan forgiveness plan.
“JCNF’s lawsuit played an integral role in today’s victory. Our case, brought in Texas, blocked the entire program at the district level and stopped the application process, allowing the legal challenge to go to the Supreme Court,” Elaine Parker, president of JCNF, wrote in a statement.
The Supreme Court’s 6-3 Republican-appointed majority seemed skeptical that the Biden administration had the authority to forgive hundreds of billions of dollars in debt for more than 40 million borrowers. Conversely, they also appeared leery about whether the individual borrowers or the state plaintiffs had the standing to bring the lawsuits.
In November, a separate lawsuit before Texas U.S. District Court Judge Mark Pittman succeeded in stalling the program, ruling that the HEROES Act did not provide the Education Department broad authority to waive or forgive student loans as the president claimed it did.
Democratic lawmakers quickly pounced on the decision, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), rebuking “this disappointing and cruel ruling.”
“The fight will not end here,” Schumer said. “The Biden administration has remaining legal routes to provide broad-based student debt cancellation. With the pause on student loan payments set to expire in weeks, I call upon the administration to do everything in its power to deliver for millions of working- and middle-class Americans struggling with student loan debt.”
Meanwhile, Republicans who long argued the Biden plan was unconstitutional rejoiced after the decision.
“Today’s Supreme Court ruling confirmed what we have known all along: the Biden administration’s student loan plan is an overreach of executive power,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said. “This is an obvious but welcomed ruling. President Biden’s student loan scheme does not ‘forgive’ debt, but unfairly transfers the burden from those who willingly took out loans onto those who chose not to attend college or already fulfilled their commitment to pay off their loans.”
Student loan payments were paused at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and that pause has been extended several times throughout the Trump and Biden administrations.
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“People think that the president of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not.”
Joe Biden on the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994
“AGAIN, FLASHBACK: Senator Biden promoted the crime bill that led to the incarceration of thousands of Americans. He argued that anyone caught with crack cocaine should be jailed and their possessions seized by the government. Nowadays, he defends his son, Hunter Biden (on the right), who struggles with addiction.” – Simon Ateba
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