President Biden accused Supreme Court justices of having “misinterpreted the Constitution” and vowed on Friday to seek new ways to relieve the crushing weight of student debt after the court’s conservative majority rejected his $400 billion plan to forgive federal loans.
Speaking from the White House after the court issued its 6-to-3 decision, Mr. Biden lashed out at Republicans who challenged his plan, saying they were willing to forgive loans for business owners during the pandemic, but not for Americans struggling with college debt.
“The hypocrisy is stunning,” he said.
The president suggested that the court had been influenced by “Republican elected officials and special interests” who opposed his plan, which would have forgiven up to $20,000 in debt for as many as 40 million people.
“They said no, no,” Mr. Biden said of the justices, “literally snatching from the hands of millions of Americans thousands of dollars in debt relief that was about to change their lives.”
The court’s finding that Mr. Biden’s loan plan exceeded his authority under the HEROES Act unraveled one of the president’s signature policy efforts and ratcheted up the pressure on him to find a new way to make good on a promise to a key constituency as the 2024 presidential campaign gets underway.
Mr. Biden said he had directed his secretary of education to use a different law, the Higher Education Act of 1965, to provide some debt relief. But it was unclear whether that law could be used to provide widespread debt relief. And education officials said it would take months, at least, before regulations could be put in place to begin providing debt relief.
Officials expressed confidence that the Higher Education Act provides authority for the secretary to broadly “settle and compromise” student loan debts.
Chief Justice John Roberts, the author of Friday’s ruling, appeared to undercut that argument in his opinion, suggesting that the ability to relieve debt under the Higher Education Act was limited to the disabled, people who are bankrupt or who have been defrauded.
But Mr. Biden said his administration will try anyway.
“In my view, it’s the best path that remains,” Mr. Biden insisted.
Mr. Biden said he had directed the Education Department not to report borrowers who miss student loan payments to credit rating agencies for 12 months. Payments are set to begin in the fall after being paused since the beginning of the pandemic.
The department also has proposed changes to benefit borrowers on an income-based repayment plan. A draft of the changes released in January said they could reduce payments on undergraduate loans to 5 percent of discretionary income, limit the accumulation of unpaid interest and allow more low-income workers to qualify for zero-dollar payments.
The ruling in the student loan lawsuit was the culmination of Republican efforts assailing a centerpiece of Mr. Biden’s broader agenda, as the president and his allies try to make the case to Americans for a second term in the White House.
In nearly two and a half years, the president has faced significant opposition in Congress and the courts to promises he made as a candidate. He dropped efforts for free community college and preschool. He abandoned taxpayer funding for child care. The courts have blocked some of his most ambitious climate policies and delayed his efforts to control the border.
Student debt relief was among the most costly relief programs Mr. Biden proposed in the wake of the pandemic. But unlike his successes in seeking congressional approval for infrastructure spending and chip manufacturing subsidies, the president used his own authority to forgive $400 billion in student loan debt. On Friday, the court said he went too far.
More broadly, the court’s decision was the latest blow to presidential power, with the justices putting new limits on how much leeway the executive branch has when interpreting congressional statutes.
That could have far-reaching implications. With Congress in political paralysis, recent presidents — including Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump — have increasingly turned to executive actions and orders to advance their policy goals.
Courts have responded by delaying or overturning some of those actions. Mr. Obama’s efforts to provide protection from deportation for the parents of some immigrants never went into effect. Many of Mr. Trump’s executive actions were deemed excessive by judges.
In the student loan case, the court said that Mr. Biden had stretched the law beyond reason.
When Mr. Biden announced last summer that his government would forgive up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt, student advocacy groups and many progressives cheered the move.
“People can start finally to climb out from under that mountain of debt,” Mr. Biden said.
His plan, which came after months of agonizing about whom it would benefit and whether it was too costly, would have been a centerpiece of his argument to voters that his economic agenda is designed to help low- and middle-income Americans blaze a path to greater prosperity.
Instead, a majority of the justices agreed with critics who said the president’s debt relief plan went beyond the president’s authority under congressional legislation that allows changes to student loans during a public emergency.
Within moments of the court ruling on Friday, it was clear that Mr. Biden would be under immense pressure from the left wing of the Democratic Party to respond swiftly and aggressively.
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic Senate leader who had pushed hard for student debt relief, demanded that Mr. Biden not give up.
“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,” Mr. Schumer said.
Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, went even further.
“The president has the clear authority under the Higher Education Act of 1965 to cancel student debt,” Mr. Sanders wrote in a statement. “He must use this authority immediately.”
For much of the last year, administration officials had refused to say whether they were working on a “Plan B” in the event the Supreme Court rejected the president’s plan.
Even after several justices expressed deep skepticism during oral arguments earlier this year, Mr. Biden and his aides continued to insist that they had confidence in the legality of the debt relief plan and would not say whether they were working on an alternative.
Millions of people with federal student loans are about to get another financial shock this fall, when the yearslong pause on repayment of existing loans ends.
The federal government, under former President Donald J. Trump, imposed the pause on repayments at the beginning of the pandemic, as businesses closed and millions of people lost their jobs. Mr. Biden renewed the pause several times since taking office, but has said it will not be renewed again now that the pandemic has largely ended.
Payments are set to resume in October, putting pressure on the debt holders that Mr. Biden’s forgiveness plan was designed to help.
One question for Mr. Biden is whether those who are disappointed will blame him or the Supreme Court when they go to the ballot box next year.
Mary-Pat Hector, the chief executive of Rise, a student advocacy organization that has pushed for student debt relief and college affordability, said many young Americans will blame Mr. Biden if he cannot deliver significant debt relief.
“Many young people, particularly Gen Z, don’t like things that seem performative, and they believe in holding people accountable,” she said. “I think that we are going to see that reaction from a lot of people.”
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
