Tennessee Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Bill Hagerty (R-TN) joined a group of Senate Republicans in filing an amicus brief to the Supreme Court pushing back on the Biden administration’s student-loan debt relief program.
During the fall of last year, President Joe Biden announced a one-time student loan forgiveness program that could provide debt relief for up to 40 million borrowers.
Biden’s debt relief plan, however, has been paused since October due to two conservative lawsuits – Biden v. Nebraska and Department of Education v. Brown – seeking to block it permanently, and the Supreme Court will hear both cases on February 28.
Republican lawmakers have called Biden’s plan an example of “unprecedented executive overreach” which “defies the separation of powers between Congress and the President.”
In the brief filed on Friday, the Republican senators argue that Biden’s loan forgiveness plan is purely political, specifically citing the president’s failure “to deliver on a campaign promise to cancel vast amounts of student debt.”
The group cited a March 2020 tweet in which then-candidate Biden tweeted, “Additionally, we should forgive a minimum of $10,000/person of federal student loans, as proposed by Senator Warren and colleagues. Young people and other student debt holders bore the brunt of the last crisis. It shouldn’t happen again.”
Additionally, we should forgive a minimum of $10,000/person of federal student loans, as proposed by Senator Warren and colleagues. Young people and other student debt holders bore the brunt of the last crisis. It shouldn't happen again.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) March 22, 2020
In addition, Biden’s use of the HEROES Act of 2003, which gives the Education Secretary the ability to waive or modify student loan balances in cases of national emergencies like COVID-19, was criticized in the brief.
The lawmakers argued that during his time as president, Biden and other Democrat leaders “admitted” that the president does not have the authority to simply cancel debts and acknowledged “Congress needed to pass a law.”
“But by the summer of 2022, the Biden Administration had exhausted its legislative efforts and recognized that Congress would not adopt the President’s unbalanced proposal. So, with the midterm elections looming, the Administration gambled that it might wrest the legislative power away from Congress and rewrite Title IV for nearly all of the 45 million borrowers with federal student loans. The Secretary’s unilateral action was patently unlawful,” the lawmakers further state in the brief.
Blackburn and Hagerty were joined by 41 Republican colleagues in filing the brief.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
Photo “Marsha Blackburn” by Marsha Blackburn. Photo “Bill Hagerty” by Senator Bill Hagerty. Background Photo “Supreme Court” by Mark Fischer. CC BY-SA 2.0.
