Here we go again?
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The existence of an income based repayment plan is a cause of the dysfunction, not a solution for the dysfunction.
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Sen. Schmitt wants answers:
https://www.scribd.com/document/659081776/Student-Debt-Letter#
Dear Secretary Cardona,
As Missouri’s U.S. Senator, I have stood up to and prevented the Biden Administration’s executiveoverreach, in order to fight for taxpayers and working families. This morning, this Administrationannounced the automatic cancellation of debt “by fixing past administrative failures.”[1] This actioncontinues this Administration’s march to ignore Congress and enact economy-wide change by fiat.>
Late last month, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down this Administration’s unlawful plan to cancelstudent debt.[2] In 2022, this Administration attempted to unilaterally—without any Congressionalauthority—enact a plan that would cost taxpayers nearly $500 billion.[3] In response, I took thisAdministration to court as Missouri’s Attorney General. The Court found that this unlawful scheme“directly injures Missouri,”[4] and that there was “no authorization for the Secretary’s plan even whenexamined using the ordinary tools of statutory interpretation.”[5] Despite your arguments to the contrary,the Secretary of Education does not “enjoy virtually unlimited power to rewrite the Education Act” inorder to cancel massive amounts of debt.[6]
Mere hours after the Court struck down your unlawful scheme, President Biden announced a “newapproach” to try to enact this massive debt cancellation yet again.[7] In response, the U.S. Department of Education announced a process to develop new regulations related to the Higher Education Act.[8] Theink was not even dry on the Court’s decision, yet it appears that this Administration intends to surrender to the far-left fringes of the Democratic Party and use Section 432(a) of the Higher Education Act to enacta new debt cancellation plan.[9]
President Biden has already asserted to the American public that “this new path is legally sound.”[10]After suing this Administration already for its first attempt at cancelling debt, I find that statementdubious. Furthermore, the Department of Education has determined that the Secretary does not have thisauthority. As recently as 2021, your Department consulted with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel on this very matter.[11] The Department concluded “the Secretary does not have statutoryauthority to provide blanket or mass cancellation, compromise, discharge, or forgiveness of student loan principal balances, and/or to materially modify the repayment amounts or terms thereof, whether due tothe COVID-19 pandemic or for any other reason.”[12] This is not a partisan position. Even leaders of your own party have asserted, “The President can only postpone, delay but not forgive student loans. Itwould take an act of Congress, not an executive order, to cancel student loan debt.”[13] Nothing in statuteexplicitly permits this Administration to enact a plan to provide massive, wide-spread debt cancellations.
Additionally, I write to remind you that the Court determined student debt cancellation is expressly adecision for the Article I branch, not for unelected bureaucrats in the Article II branch. With your mostrecent scheme, the Court found the plan simply amounted to “the Executive seizing the power of theLegislature.”[14] Common sense demands that Congress would not have intended a law enacted decadesago to permit department officials to reinterpret and reimagine new authorities to eliminate hundreds of billions of dollars in debt. As the Court succinctly wrote, “’[t]he basic and consequential tradeoffs’inherent in a mass debt cancellation program ‘are ones that Congress would likely have intended for itself.’”[15] In short, this Administration’s plan will remain unlawful until the proposal attains the consentof both chambers of Congress and is signed by the President.
In order to conduct proper oversight of your next actions, I respectfully ask that you provide me with thefollowing information and answers:
- Does this Administration intend to cancel up to $50,000 in student debt, as advocated bymultiple leaders in the Democratic Party? Please provide any rationale or economic assumptionsthat the Department intends to rely upon.
- What legal basis does the Administration attempt to rely on, given the Department of Education have already concluded the Higher Education Act does not provide any authority for massive debt cancellations?
- What actions has this Administration taken in 2023 to submit its massive debt cancellation plan to Congress, instead of allowing “negotiated rulemaking committee” to make a decision thatcosts taxpayers over $500 billion without any Congressional approval?
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Coldly calculated. Know what drives voters more than being bought? Being angry at someone for blocking your money.
