America's Talking - States File Suit to Block Biden’s Student Debt Forgiveness Plan

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. We are recording this on Friday, April 12th. Despite the U.S. Supreme Court telling President Joe Biden he does not have the authority to cancel student loan debt for millions of Americans and transfer those costs to American taxpayers, the president continues attempting to do so. Just this morning, the White House announced it's canceling an additional

Starting point is 00:00:30 $7.4 billion in student loan debt. That's after a similar announcement on Monday. Republicans say the scheme in his attempt to influence this November's presidential election, arguing Biden is attempting to buy off voters by transferring the debt that they agreed to incur to American taxpayers. Joining me to discuss, this is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. Casey, let's start with the latest on President Biden's debt cancellation announcements. Sure. I mean, so $7.4 billion. I think this came as a special surprise and got more news attention because Biden announced earlier this week a sweeping much larger student loan forgiveness action that would affect maybe as many as 30 million Americans. The one announced on Friday, what, you know, is a much smaller number would only affect, you know, we're talking like maybe almost 300,000 borrower. So, you know, an order of magnitude. two difference. But while this most recent announcement got a lot more attention, Biden has been doing this kind of thing steadily since he took office. In fact, we can say that Biden, you know, is

Starting point is 00:01:40 attempting to do it again after failing at the Supreme Court, but he's not even really attempting. He's doing it and succeeding and he hasn't had much, you know, trouble doing it. He's in many, many different ways of forgiving partially the student debt. And the only real big loss for him was the major one that went to the Supreme Court and was struck down. And so this is just more of the same. It might seem like a surprise that some people, but he's been doing this trickle down, this trickling forgiveness, plan, finding different small little avenues through federal regulations of things to forgive parts of loans for certain groups through the myriad of federal programs. So this is just more of the same for Biden. Casey, well, let's talk a little bit about the Supreme Court's

Starting point is 00:02:20 ruling from last year. How can the president continue to do that? to forgive additional student loan debt when the Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, told him, you know, months ago that he couldn't do it. Yeah, I mean, it is an interesting question. It was a pretty resounding defeat for the president at the Supreme Court, and it raises that very question that you just raised. And I think there's kind of two answers. The first is Biden is trying a different tact this time. Last time around, he tried to use the Heroes Act and a very small provision, really like a clause or a sentence in this kind of unrelated congressional bill.

Starting point is 00:02:58 And he tried to take this sentence and expand the authority given by Congress under that, you know, one provision of a bill. And he tried that was more narrowly tailored. And he tried to expand it to, you know, tens of millions of Americans. Basically, Congress allowed sort of some student loan forgiveness for certain people often kind of tied to veterans. And he tried to use that to apply to the whole country. And the Supreme Court said, you can't do that.

Starting point is 00:03:19 It's not in the spirit of the law that was passed by Congress. And so this time he's sort of. taking a different tact. He tried to go through this law. And now he's taking a more regulatory approach. He's trying, he's going through the federal agencies and he's got a proposed rule. It's going to go through comment. It's going to be a long, extended process before it even comes. It's going to be almost certainly on the other side of the election, which is interesting because Biden, you know, Biden gets credit for saying he's forgiving student loans. But this, this rule is not going to be enacted until, you know, probably at least a couple years if it gets enacted.

Starting point is 00:03:54 at all. And then that raises the question. If Republicans are able to win big in November, they can undo this rule. And so, you know, you could say, well, Biden is just taking another, he's trying to go the regulatory route to get this done. Or you could be a little more cynical and say, well, Biden knows that the Supreme Court might strike this down again. But what does that matter to him? If best case scenario, the rule goes into effect and he gets credit for it. Worst case scenario, he gets credit for it going into this election. And then later and somewhere through the middle of his second term, It gets struck down, but he's already president again. Casey, a coalition of states you wrote about this has filed a legal challenge to this latest effort,

Starting point is 00:04:33 Mondays sweeping student loan forgiveness announcement. Tell us what is their challenge about? That's right. I mean, so people may not know this, but the last time the Supreme Court ruled against Biden, it was because of state challenge, and that's happening again this time. So Missouri is kind of leading the charge, but they have a coalition of states, and they're going right down the middle, similar claim to what they said last time, which is the president doesn't have this authority.

Starting point is 00:05:00 He can't do it. He's expanded it too much. And so this here's a quote from the lawsuit. So just last year, Skoda struck down an attempt by the president to force teachers, truckers, and farmers to pay for the student loan debt of other Americans to the enormous tune of $430 billion. In striking down that attempt, the court declared that the president cannot unilaterally alter large sections of the American economy. So, you know, it's interesting because it hits that authority argument. It points out $430 billion at a time when our debt is soaring. And it also hits what's more

Starting point is 00:05:38 of a political argument, Dan, which you hear a lot, which is, wait a minute, these liberal arts majors who maybe grew up in good families, they could afford to go to college, they were sent off to college, got degrees and maybe questionable things, certain humanities that were not very marketable. Their debt is going to be paid for by the kids who couldn't afford to go to college. And, you know, as this lawsuit stated, kind of the truckers of America. Well, let's just talk about that briefly, Casey, because we are almost out of time. Much of the mainstream media reports this as President Biden is just canceling debt for millions of Americans who can't afford to pay the loans back. But that's only one small

Starting point is 00:06:17 part of the story. The debt doesn't just go away. It trains. transfers that debt to all American taxpayers, whether they incurred debt, that debt themselves, the majority of which in fact hasn't incurred student loan debt. So low-income taxpayers, middle-income taxpayers, they're picking up the cost of this debt cancellation. In the meantime, federal debt is approaching $35 trillion. I'm looking at the U.S. debt clock right now. It's at more than $34.6 trillion. dollars. You also reported this week, Casey, that the federal government, just to make, to be able to spend bills, is borrowing $6 billion every single day. What does that mean for taxpayers? Yeah, I mean, it means that we're on an unsustainable debt trajectory. And as you said,

Starting point is 00:07:09 $6 billion a day in the short term, it's okay, we know, I haven't noticed my life all that different from that $6 billion a day. The pushback to that would be well, inflation is on the rise again, prices are up 20% since Biden took office and debt spending does affect inflation negatively. So that's one part of it. But what it really means is someday in the future, you know, maybe 10 years, it might be 20 or 30. Someday in the future, you know, us or our kids or grandkids are going to have a sort of come to Jesus moment with the debt. And they're going to have to start picking and choosing which programs they can no longer have anymore. I mean, there are certain federal programs that are really important to Americans that are just, you know, going 80 miles an hour at a brick. wall. So, you know, entitlement programs are going to be in trouble. And so we're going to come to

Starting point is 00:07:54 a point where we're going to have to pick and choose or we're just going to get inflation so high by printing money to pay for everything that all of Americans are going to suffer. And so we're in this weird prisoner's dilemma where Republicans and Democrats and neither wants to be the one who says, hey, we need to cut spending back big time. But if neither of them do it, then we're on a crash, a collision course that's not going to be good. Casey, thank you for joining us today. listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecentersquare.com.

America's Talking - States File Suit to Block Biden’s Student Debt Forgiveness Plan

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