It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, February 05, 2023
WAIT, WHAT?
Betsy DeVos and former GOP lawmakers who helped construct versions of the legislation Biden is using to cancel student debt just told the Supreme Court his plan 'obviously violates' the law
Ayelet Sheffey Sun, February 5, 2023 Betsy DeVos.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Betsy DeVos, John Boehner, and other former GOP officials and lawmakers filed amicus briefs opposing student-debt relief.
Both briefs criticized the legal path Biden used to cancel student debt, saying relief requires Congressional approval.
The Supreme Court is hearing the two lawsuits challenging Biden's relief on February 28. Former Republican lawmakers and government officials want the Supreme Court to know why they think student-loan forgiveness is illegal.
Over the past few days, nine conservative groups filed a series of amicus curiae briefs to the Supreme Court opposing President Joe Biden's plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for federal borrowers. One of the briefs was filed on behalf of five former Republican US education secretaries — Betsy DeVos, Margaret Spellings, Roderick Paige, Lamar Alexander, and William Bennett — and another was filed on behalf of former GOP Reps. John Kline, Howard McKeon, and former House Speaker John Boehner.
After two conservative-backed lawsuits late last year paused the implementation of Biden's debt relief, the Supreme Court agreed to take up both of the cases on February 28. Since then, amicus briefs have flooded the court from advocates and scholars supporting the relief to conservative groups opposing it. The latest round of briefs in opposition delved into criticism of the education secretary's authority to enact this broad relief for millions of borrowers.
As one of the briefs noted, Kline and McKeon were both involved in constructing the HEROES Act of 2003 — the law that Biden is using to cancel student debt — which says that the Education Secretary can modify student-loan balances in connection with a national emergency. Per the brief, McKeon was the original author of the HEROES Act of 2001 in response to 9/11, and Kline authored the HEROES Act of 2003.
Their brief said that Biden's plan "obviously violates" provisions in the Act because a "blanket forgiveness policy" isn't limited to those who suffered direct pandemic hardship, cancelling a debt isn't the same as a waiver or modification, and "outright cancellation is hardly 'necessary' to mitigate the harms associated with the pandemic, particularly since no relevant borrower has been required to make a single payment since it began."
"If Congress really meant for the HEROES Act to confer this type of authority on the Secretary, it would have said so," it said.
DeVos' and the other former education secretaries' brief also questioned the authority Biden has to carry out this relief. Represented by the Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies — a conservative nonprofit — the former officials argued that "such monumental debt cancellation requires clear and direct Congressional authorization."
"Though concerns about the rising costs of higher education and the amount of outstanding student loan debt have been part of the public discourse for decades (and long before COVID-19), the idea that the Executive Branch could unilaterally cancel student loan debt on a mass basis without Congressional authority was not seriously entertained," the brief continued.
It cited a comment from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made in 2021, in which she said that "people think that the President of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not. He can postpone. He can delay. But he does not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress."
Republican lawmakers have firmly opposed Biden's student-debt relief — but current and former Democratic lawmaker have consistently argued the HEROES Act does permit Biden to give debt relief to millions of Americans recovering from the pandemic. Former Democratic architect of HEROES Act said debt relief falls "exactly" under Biden's authority
As expected, advocates of student-loan forgiveness, alongside Biden's administration, have staunchly vouched for the authority of the president's debt relief plan. So did former Rep. George Miller, a top Democratic lawmaker on the House education committee who helped construct the HEROES Act of 2003.
In an amicus brief Smita Ghosh, Appellate Counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center, filed on behalf of Miller in November, it argued that the "contention that the loan forgiveness plan exceeds the Administration's authority is completely without merit."
"As our brief shows, Congress used broad language in the text of the HEROES Act to make clear that the Education Secretary has extensive authority to respond to national emergencies, and the history of the law confirms that it authorizes comprehensive actions when the circumstances call for them," the filing said.
Biden's Justice Department reiterated that argument in its full legal defense it filed in January, and after Biden announced he would end the pandemic's national emergency declaration in May, a White House official said that doesn't change things when it comes to getting millions of borrowers student-debt relief.
"There was a national emergency that impacted millions of student borrowers," the official said. "Many of those borrowers still face risk of default on their student loans due to that emergency. Congress gave the Secretary of Education the authority under the HEROES Act to take steps to prevent that harm, and he is."
171 Republican lawmakers join effort to stop student loan forgiveness program
ARTHUR JONES II Sun, February 5, 2023 at 11:43 AM MST·5 min rea
GOP Rep. Virginia Foxx speaks at a press conference at the U.S. Capitol, March 09, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Win Mcnamee/Getty Images, FILE) NO RELATION TO RED FOXX
While White House officials have been adamant that the president is within his authority to wipe out hundreds of billions in government-backed loans to provide "breathing room to tens of millions of working families," Republicans challenging it take the opposite view.
The forgiveness plan that could relieve up to $20,000 for eligible loan recipients is an unconstitutional breach of the separation of powers and a violation of the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003 (HEROES Act), according to the House GOP brief.
"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," House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., said in a statement.
The House GOP brief included 25 members on Foxx's committee and roughly 100 other lawmakers. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy did not sign it, though Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Majority Whip Tom Emmer and House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan did.
Separately, 43 Republican senators signed their own brief in support of the challenge to the loan forgiveness program. Led by Tennessee's Marsha Blackburn, they also call the president's plan unlawful and claim it exceeds his office. GOP U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn speaks in Des Moines, Iowa.
(Scott Olson/Getty Images, FILE) The White House has pushed back.
"While opponents of our plan are siding with special interests and trying every which way to keep millions of middle class Americans in debt, the President and his Administration are fighting to lawfully give middle-class families some breathing room as they recover from the pandemic and prepare to resume loan payments in January," spokesman Abdullah Hasan said in October.
However, the House Republicans say they believe Biden is exploiting the language of the HEROES Act, which the administration argues vests the education secretary with expansive authority to alleviate financial hardship for federal student loan recipients as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Indeed, the entire purpose of the HEROES Act is to authorize the Secretary to grant student-loan-related relief to at-risk borrowers because of a national emergency -- precisely what the Secretary did here," Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in a Supreme Court filing defending the proposed debt cancellation.
After legal challenges last year saw the forgiveness program halted by lower courts, the Supreme Court announced in December that it will hear oral arguments on the issue at the end of February.
A decision on the program is then expected by June.
PHOTO: FILE - US President Joe Biden speaks about student debt relief at Delaware State University in Dover, Delaware, Oct. 21, 2022. (Oliver Contreras/AFP via Getty Images, FILE)
The moratorium on loan repayments, which was first put in place under President Donald Trump earlier in the pandemic, is now set to expire 60 days after the decision or 60 days after June 30 -- whichever date comes first.
A vocal opponent of Biden's plan, Foxx also accused the administration of "bypassing Congress" to implement loan forgiveness.
"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," she said in her statement.
Foxx told ABC News in an interview last month that she believes it is an "injustice" for taxpayers to fund the administration's "scheme." The plan would cost $400 billion, according to an estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, and its nearly half-a-trillion-dollar price tag worries Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C.
Despite the White House saying the cancellation would give needed economic relief, Duncan said it would be sending the U.S. further into a "debt spiral."
"The Court should invalidate the Secretary of Education's sweeping student loan forgiveness program since it trespasses on Congressional authority and violates the separation of powers," he said.
The U.S. Education Department has said the president's decision to cancel up to $10,000 for some loan recipients -- those who made less than $125,000 on their 2020 or 2021 taxes or $250,000 filing jointly -- or $20,000 for low-income recipients who received Pell grants could impact roughly 43 million Americans who owe $1.6 trillion in student loans.
That was particularly important in light of how COVID-19 upended the economy, according to the White House.
PHOTO: FILE - US President Joe Biden speaks as Miguel Cardona, US secretary of education, listens in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C., Oct. 17, 2022. (Bloomberg via Getty Images, FILE)
"This is why we took this action -- to make sure that tens of millions of Americans are able to deal with a time that was very difficult, especially in the last couple of years," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told ABC News' Karen Travers last week. "That's been the important priority of the president: to make sure folks … who felt the pinch if you will, who felt the hurt the most these past couple of years due to what COVID did to the economy, got a little extra help."
Of that group, 16 million were approved before the department's website stopped accepting applications to let the legal process play out. However, no loan forgiveness has been discharged.
Last month, over a dozen advocacy groups like the NAACP filed briefs in support of the president's plan.
"Student loan borrowers from all walks of life suffered profound financial harms during the pandemic and their continued recovery and successful repayment hinges on the Biden Administration's student debt relief plan," Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in response to the coalition of groups joining in support of the plan. "We will continue to defend our legal authority to provide the debt relief working and middle-class families clearly need and deserve."
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