The timing of President Joe Biden’s new plan to cancel student debt may give Democrats a good chance to communicate during the 2024 election.
After the Supreme Court rejected the Biden administration’s initial student debt cancellation scheme last week, Biden promised to seek a comparable exertion involving an alternate law as the authority.
The Higher Education Act of 1965 provides the secretary of education with authority to “compromise, waive, or release any right, title, claim, lien, or demand, however acquired, including any equity or any right of redemption.” which serves as the foundation for the current endeavor.
The Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003, which grants the education secretary the authority to “waive or modify” loans, was the foundation for the initial pledge to cancel $430 billion in student loan debt. In his opinion published on Friday, Chief Justice John Roberts stated that Congress would need to pass such a broad authority explicitly.
The Biden administration’s new plan will take longer to implement because it will have to go through a rule-making process that will take months to complete after it was defeated at the Supreme Court and with the upcoming election in 2024.
Republicans condemned Biden’s new plan, including House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee ranking member Bill Cassidy (R-LA).
Cassidy stated in a statement that “President Biden’s student loan schemes do not forgive debt but instead transfer it from those who willingly took on the debt onto those who never went to college or sacrificed to pay their student loans.” Foxx added that “taxpayers will be forced to pay for the costliest regulation in our nation’s history.” Both of these statements were made in response to Foxx’s statement.
Adam Kissel, a visiting fellow at the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, says that the second attempt could be a legal risk but could give Democrats something to discuss going into the election.
According to Kissel, the risk is deciding between a substantial proposal like the first that will likely be rejected in court on similar grounds and a regulation small enough to pass judicial review.
According to Kissel, who spoke with SurgeZircUS, the “balance is getting votes for going big and losing votes over giving borrowers false hope.”
A new rule must be published by November 1, 2023, to take effect on July 1, 2024. Additionally, the deadline to take effect on July 1, 2025, is November 1, 2024, just days before the election.
Either way, Kissel said, Democrats can make the same argument on the campaign trail: “Vote for us so that we can defend this regulation in court.”
“If all you care about is votes, you kind of want it to not take effect until July of 2025 anyway because then you go in as the [student] debt-cutting president,” he continued.
If Republicans pursue a challenge as they did in the initial attempt, both dates would also not provide enough time for the courts to examine the new plan before Election Day.
According to Kissel, regulations could also work in the Republicans’ favor if the party communicates them correctly.
“Citizens are motivated by a sense of injustice, and student loan forgiveness is extremely unjust to people who didn’t go to college and are taxpayers, people who earned their scholarship, and people who paid off their debt already,” Kissel said.
Assuming the new arrangement is broad, it probably will not endure a court challenge since that arrangement of the Advanced Education Act is focused on credit pardoning under extraordinary and individual conditions, similar to public crises or, on the other hand, assuming a school capitulates to extortion charges, Kissel made sense of.
He explained, “When you look at the authority in the Higher Education Act, it doesn’t automatically mean that the secretary can waive all student loans.” Similar to when you stated that the IRS commissioner has the authority to waive taxes, it cannot imply that. It is absurd to contemplate a plenary power.”
