(DailyVantage.com) – On Wednesday, President Joe Biden expressed doubt regarding the fate of his student loan forgiveness plan.
The plan’s constitutionality is currently being deliberated by a 5-4 conservative Supreme Court. On Tuesday the Court listened to oral arguments against the loan forgiveness.
Regarding the plan’s survival in the high court, Biden said “I’m confident we’re on the right side of the law. I’m not confident about the outcome of the decision yet.”
Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, however, offered a more sanguine response during a press briefing saying “we believe in our legal authority to get that (the plan) done and get that implemented.”
It is unclear, however, whether the legislature ever delegated the power to forgive student loans to the executive branch. The White House repeatedly cites the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act (HEROES) as a case in point. The bill’s language, however, is highly interpretive and up for debate.
Republicans have been especially critical of Biden’s plan, saying that the Congress never afforded the executive such powers.
Representative Jeff Duncan (R-SC) has said that “the Biden administration does not have the authority to unilaterally ‘forgive’ student loan debt across the board…” He goes on to call the move a “political maneuver”.
Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), in a very blunt tweet, wrote that “there is no such thing as student loan forgiveness.”
Republican lawmakers all seem to be parroting the same argument: Biden’s loan forgiveness is a tax on working class Americans who never attended college.
It is times like these where it becomes evident how pivotal former President Trump’s Supreme Court appointments were. During his time in the White House, Trump appointed a whopping three justices to the high court: Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett.
So, while Trump is no longer in office, he still looms large over this matter.
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