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How will Republicans responds to Biden's student loan giveaway?
Even though the Supreme Court scuppered Biden's plan to forgive student loan debt without congressional approval, he is apparently doing it anyway. So far, it would appear that 4.75 million people have had loans forgiven for a total cost of $167 billion.
Here's a link to a recent Biden administration press release.
I will admit, the devil is in the details. I am not going to comment on the constitutional legality, the many ways to qualify for forgiveness, nor the amount given to high-income earners, which some have claimed is substantial.
But the total cost is staggering. It amounts to over $1000 for every American who pays income tax.
Clearly, this money has electoral implications. The base of people who have large student debts is presumed to be mostly Democratic voters. By giving this group a mean payment of $35,000 each, the Biden administration hopes to increase their enthusiasm to vote. Even the ones who do lean towards Trump might view Biden favorably after getting (almost) enough money to buy a new Tesla Model 3.
Buying votes goes back as far as democracy does. Famously, Julius Caesar was forced to conquer southern Spain after going broke buying votes to become Pontifex Maximus. In recent times, some have argued that farm subsidies amount to vote buying. But, while special interests have always played a large role in American politics, student debt forgiveness is possibly the closest thing to naked vote buying we've seen in our lifetimes.
So... how do the Republicans respond? Whose votes should they purchase with a fig leaf of social justice? I'd propose a group that honestly needs it and creates a lot of value for society: blue collar workers. People who work 30 hours a week or more and make less than $30/hour should get an "earned income credit" of $10,000 a year.
If we're going to just be giving money away, give it to the workers, not to excess elites.
One thing that confuses me as a non American is the details of how Biden ignored the Supreme Court here... did he find a loophole, or did just a drive a bus through the ruling and dared them to do something?
Surely it must be the first and its loopholery, but I'm not entirely sure how the rules work in these cases. For example it certainly seems like the court gets de facto ignored with New York gun laws, with high degrees of non cooperation from lower courts and law enforcement. To what degree can people just ignore the court and get away with it? That seems... odd.
The loan forgiveness discussed in the press release are based on different programs than the loan forgiveness struck down by the supremes.
For example, the press release is announcing $7.7 billion more in loan forgiveness. $5.2 billion of that are based on the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program (basically requires making payments for 10 years while working a government job, with the balance forgiven at the end of the 10 years), a program expressly authorized by statute with some administrative adjustments implemented by the Biden administration.
That is in contrast to the program the supremes struck down(basically a flat $10-20 thousand in forgiveness if your income is below some threshold).
It should not be surprising that striking down the latter does not effect the former.
That does sound more reasonable, is there precedent that the president does have the power to make this forgiveness without involving congress?
It seems risky if this becomes the norm from an outside view, and could well lead to tit for tat... is it just because they're technically loans (you owe the federal government) rather than a literal targeted payment from the federal government to a group chosen by the president? In economic terms they're kind of fungible, but I assume there's fewer special interest groups to neatly forgive so it constrains the president at least a bit...
Of the $7.7 billion in recent forgiveness announced in OP's press release, $5.2 billion is based on a law passed during GWB's administration, and the first grants of forgiveness would have gone out during Trump's administration. So sure, precedent, but also statutory grounding.
If this surprises you, perhaps you should consider whether OP's post faithfully characterized the situation.
I have to admit my belief in this being "bullshit porkbarrel politics" has dropped from a 80 to 20 on an indexed basis, based on your comments.
I do think that if Trump tried anything like this, especially following on from a similar policy being slapped down by the supreme court, there would be far more protests. However, that's kind of hard to prove.
Plus, loan forgiveness still seems a fairly bad idea, independant from if it's legal...
For what it's worth, I don't wish to convince anyone this isn't porkbarrel politics. I think it is.
I simply take issue with the framing here that the Biden administration is ignoring and overriding the supreme court with this recent loan forgiveness.
Plenty of bad executive actions are perfectly legal.
And sometimes a first attempt at a goal is struck down, and a later, different attempt at the same goal is not. Trump's early travel restrictions in particular come to mind.
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"Based on" in the sense that a certain genre of Hollywood drama is "based on a true story".
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Most of the forgiveness is coming from a change in how the rules around repayment. The biggest shift is the terms of repayment - both parties when they've been in power have introduced various forms of repayment plans based on income, ability to pay, whatever, the normal administrative stuff.
The shift Biden's done is the newest plan drops the term to when previously, under certain plans, if you paid for 20 years, even if you didn't pay it off, the loan was forgiven (this was true under prior admins as well), they changed the terms to 10 years, and then, basically, anybody who has paid for 10 or more years now is getting their loan forgiven.
My understanding was that it is only up to a certain amount like 10 or 20k on the new 10 year plan, so not anyone for any amount. PSLF already was ten year, it was just a cluster till this admin fixed it.
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