(TheRedAlertNews.com) – In a massive blow to President Joe Biden’s political agenda, the United States Supreme Court has struck down his $400 billion student debt forgiveness program, ruling it requires congressional approval.
According to the 6-3 decision approved by the conservative majority on the Supreme Court bench, the presidential plan to forgive college loans to 26 million Americans presents an overreach of his powers and is unconstitutional.
Biden planned to erase $10,000 in debt for borrowers earning less than $125,000 and up to $20,000 for Pell Grants recipients.
However, six GOP-led states and two individual borrowers disputed it, arguing the president has no legal authority to do that without the approval of the US Congress.
The Biden administration justified the college debt forgiveness program with the 2003 post-9/11 HEROES Act, which allowed the US Education Department to waive student debt during a national emergency.
However, according to the Supreme Court majority, the HEROES Act contains “no authorization for the [Education] Secretary’s plan.”
“Congress did not unanimously pass the HEROES Act with such power in mind,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion, as cited by The Daily Mail.
He added the plan shifting $400 billion in costs to the American taxpayer “requires that Congress speak clearly before a Department (of Education) Secretary can unilaterally alter large sections of the American economy.”
The new ruling comes a day after it ruled race-based college admission, i.e., “affirmative action,” to be unconstitutional in another severe blow to Biden and the left.
The US Supreme Court’s decision that Congress has to pass a college loan forgiveness program seemingly infuriated the president, who called it “wrong” and “disappointing.”
“My Administration’s student debt relief plan would have been the lifeline tens of millions of hardworking Americans needed as they try to recover from a once-in-a-century pandemic. And it would have been good for economic growth,” Biden argued in a statement, using the ruling to attack the GOP.
“The hypocrisy of Republican elected officials is stunning. They had no problem with billions in pandemic-related loans to businesses… But when it came to providing relief to millions of hardworking Americans, they did everything in their power to stop it,” he said.
