Biden’s student loan cancellation plan axed by court

By Casey Harper
The Center Square 

A U.S. appeals court has killed President Joe Biden’s SAVE plan to cancel hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan debt.

Though Biden is out of office, the legal proceedings began while Biden was in the White House after the former president ordered the Department of Education to use a previously passed law to lower payments sometimes as low as zero dollars or forgive the loans outright.

The St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the Department of Education’s plan under Biden, saying the former president went beyond his authority.

"The secretary has gone well beyond this authority by designing a plan where loans are largely forgiven rather than repaid," the court ruled.

A Penn Wharton analysis of the SAVE plan estimated it could cost taxpayers about $450 billion over ten years. 

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey led the legal challenge to Biden’s effort with several other states, finally winning in court on Tuesday.

“We obtained another court order BLOCKING an illegal Biden-era student loan scheme,” Bailey wrote on X. “Though [Biden] is out of office, this precedent is imperative to ensuring a President cannot force working Americans to foot the bill for someone else's Ivy League debt. HUGE win.”

Now, the court ruling is yet another legal precedent limiting the president’s power to forgive student debt.

Biden tried to work around Constitutional limitations to his executive authority through a variety of maneuvers only to be slapped down by the court. Most notably, Biden’s sweeping student loan cancellation of $10,000 per borrower was blocked by the Supreme Court.

Tuesday’s court ruling is timely as Democrats push back on Trump’s executive orders to hack away at federal agencies, cutting the federal workforce by thousands of workers at a time.

Critics say Trump is abusing his authority and that Republicans are letting him get away with it.

Republicans say Democrats applauded Biden's executive overreach only to criticize Trump for his executive orders.

“Democrats didn't bat an eye when President Biden forced federal workers to get the COVID vaccine or brazenly attempted to cancel student loan debt,” Sen. Ted Cruz, wrote on X. 

“President Trump and Elon Musk are exactly right to cut every woke program funded by the Biden administration.”