Biden puts taxpayers on the hook for over 150,000 debtors’ student loans before leaving office

President Joe Biden
announced Monday that he has decided to once again engage in charity with other people’s money, putting American taxpayers on the hook for over 150,000 debtors’ federal student loans, thereby “bringing the total number of Americans who have had their student debt canceled by my Administration to over 5 million.”

Biden bragged that his administration has “forgiven more student loan debt than any other administration in history.”
According to the Department of Education, the Biden administration has blown $183.6 billion across 28 debt relief actions since January 2021. These actions have largely been executed by decree, not through Congress.

Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona suggested in a statement Monday that this wealth redistribution scheme is part of a broader effort to establish “a system that is affordable and accountable to both students and taxpayers.”

The latest debt cancellation, which Investopedia
indicated has a price tag of nearly $4.23 billion, consists of four types of discharges. First, the Education Department approved 6,100 debtors for $465 million in relief through Public Service Loan Forgiveness; second, the department approved around 85,000 debtors for $1.26 billion in the event they were found to have attended schools that cheated or defrauded their students; third, the department approved 61,000 debtors suffering total and permanent disabilities; and fourth, the department had other Americans shoulder the debt of 6,100 public service workers.

“People who cannot afford their student loans because they are in public service, have disabilities, were cheated by their college, or who have completed decades of payments are now getting the relief they were promised,” said Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal. “These permanent reforms will continue to more and more borrowers every year.”

Biden’s promise may end up being more empty symbolism, especially if this latest handout is met by the kinds of legal challenges that past debt-cancellation initiatives have faced.

In June 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court
torpedoed Biden’s effort to cancel more than $400 billion in loans. Chief Justice John Roberts noted in the opinion for the court’s 6-3 majority that the Biden administration “lacked the authority under the [Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2023] to unilaterally cancel debt and that such sweeping policy changes needed explicit Congressional approval.”

A month after the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals
blocked more of Biden’s student debt-cancellation plan, the Supreme Court denied the Biden administration’s emergency request to lift the appeals court’s nationwide injunction on the Saving on a Valuable Education Plan.

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