For the case challenging President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, 126 House Republicans filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court.
Last year, the Biden administration announced a program to cancel federal student loans worth $10,000 and Pell Grants worth $20,000. Loan forgiveness would be available to people with incomes below $125,000 per year.
Two conservative lawsuits – Biden v. Nebraska and Department of Education v. Brown – have blocked Biden’s debt relief plan since October. The Supreme Court will hear both cases on February 28.
Leading the group of representatives in filing the brief was Education and Workforce Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who criticized the Biden administration’s attempt to arbitrarily forgive loans through the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act, or HEROES Act.
The HEROES Act of 2003 gives the Education Secretary the ability to waive or modify student loan balances in cases of national emergencies like COVID-19.
In a statement, Congresswoman Foxx said, “The Biden administration’s student loan bailout is a political gambit engineered by special interest groups; abusing the HEROES Act for such a ploy is shameful. Moreover, this administration is bypassing Congress, which is elected by the American people to protect their interests.
Foxx added, “Congress is the only body with the authority to enact sweeping and fundamental changes of this nature, and it is ludicrous for President Biden to assume he can simply bypass the will of the American people
A group of Republican Senators also filed an amicus brief pushing back on Biden’s debt forgiveness plan.
A total of 43 Senators argued in a separate brief that the loan forgiveness plan is purely political, specifically citing the president’s failure “to deliver on a campaign promise to cancel vast amounts of student debt.”
Specifically, the senators cited a March 2020 tweet in which then-candidate Biden tweeted, “Additionally, we should forgive a minimum of $10,000/person of federal student loans, as proposed by Senator Warren and colleagues. Young people and other student debt holders bore the brunt of the last crisis. It shouldn’t happen again.”
It’s a great sight to see House and Senate Republicans and various legal groups banding together to push back against Joe Biden’s student debt cancelation plan. Not only is the plan downright insulting to those who have paid their student loan debts, but it is unconstitutional – as the President has no authority to cancel vast amounts of debts at the snap of his fingers.
