Haisten Willis of the Washington Examiner reports on challenges facing President Biden’s college student loan plan.
Millions of student loan borrowers are looking on nervously as President Joe Biden’s $500 billion debt transfer takes on delays and a steady stream of lawsuits.
The move was widely seen as a way to energize young voters and was announced less than three months before the midterms, but now faces the prospect of becoming another court loss for the Biden administration.
Biden announced the debt forgiveness program on Aug. 24. It transfers up to $10,000 in student loans for individuals making less than $125,000 a year or households making less than $250,000. Pell Grant recipients, will be eligible for up to $20,000 in forgiveness. Administration officials say money will go out the door before January, when the nearly three-year-old repayment pause lifts, but no one has been able to apply yet.
“This week, we’re giving everyone a preview of what the [application] form would look like,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday. “And we know that a lot of you were curious about what it would look like, so we did that. So we’re trying to be transparent. We’re trying to lay out how this process is going to work.”
The original timeline included applications launching in early October. The Department of Education teased an application form this week but officials dropped the “early” part, saying the form would launch this month and, once available, could be completed in less than five minutes.
In the meantime, at least half a dozen lawsuits have emerged challenging the program’s legality. Those filing suit argue that only Congress has the power to set monetary policy, that the pandemic no longer qualifies as a national emergency giving the president expanded powers, and that the program also violates the Administrative Procedure Act, which lays out the method federal agencies should follow to ensure the executive branch’s policies are well reasoned and explained.