The bets are that the High Court will go thumbs down on the Biden admin effort to erase BILLIONS in loan debt….
In addtion to to the money part?
A thumbs down might actually HELP Biden politically in people being pissed off…..
Guns…
Abortion….
Now Student Loans?…..
The High Courts politics maybe actually helping Democratic Party lawmakers politically…
Stay tuned….
Members of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed deeply skeptical on Tuesday of the legality of the Biden administration’s plan to wipe out more than $400 billion in student debt because of the coronavirus pandemic.
During the first of two arguments on the program, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. indicated that the administration had violated separation-of powers principles by acting without sufficiently explicit congressional authorization to undertake one of the most ambitious and expensive executive actions in the nation’s history.
The chief justice, joined by other members of the court’s six-member conservative majority, invoked the “major questions doctrine,” which requires that government initiatives with major political and economic consequences be clearly authorized by Congress.
The law the administration relies on, the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003, usually called the HEROES Act, gives the secretary of education the power to “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision” to protect borrowers affected by “a war or other military operation or national emergency.”
Justice Elena Kagan, a liberal, said that language plainly authorized the administration to act in light of the pandemic, adding that the court routinely considered “really confusing” statutes. “This one is not,” she said.
Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar, representing the administration, said its plan fit comfortably within the statutory language, noting that the Trump administration had also relied on the 2003 law.
In March 2020, President Donald J. Trump declared that the coronavirus pandemic was a national emergency, and his administration invoked the HEROES Act to pause student loan repayment requirements and to suspend the accrual of interest.
The Biden administration followed suit. As of April, the payment pause has cost the government more than $100 billion, according to the Government Accountability Office.
In August, the administration said it planned to switch gears, ending the repayment pause but forgiving $10,000 in debt for individuals earning less than $125,000 per year, or $250,000 per household, and $20,000 for those who received Pell grants for low-income families. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated the plan’s price tag at $400 billion.
In separate cases, six Republican-led states — Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina — and two individuals sued to stop the new plan.
The first question in both cases is whether the plaintiffs have suffered the sort of direct and concrete injury that gives them standing to sue…..
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The debt forgiveness program may have helped Democrats in November’s midterm elections. While voters as a whole split about evenly on the matter, with 50 percent supporting it and 47 percent opposing it, according to CNN exit polls, the program had far higher approval fr
Note…
One hopes the Biden people have a plan ‘B” up their sleeves on this….
We are talking about a LOT of money….