Just two years ago, President
Joe Biden
said that he didn’t believe he had the authority to unilaterally forgive student loans through executive action. Following the
Supreme Court’s
predictable decision in Biden v. Nebraska, in which a 6-3 majority deemed his student loan forgiveness plan unconstitutional, Biden declared the ruling “unthinkable.”
Examples of such hypocrisy and out-of-touch, inflated rhetoric abound.
DESPITE LEFT’S HYSTERIA, THE SUPREME COURT IS WORKING AS IT SHOULD
Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
(D-NY) publicly
accused
the court of “putting its rulings up for sale,” speculating that the rationale for the decision was simply that Justice Samuel Alito had been bribed by a billionaire (and not that Biden’s unilateral action was obviously unconstitutional). Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said that the court was refusing “to follow the plain language of the law on student loan cancellation,” and that the president must use “more tools to cancel student debt.” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the Senate majority leader, said that “this disappointing and cruel student debt ruling shows the callousness of the MAGA Republican-controlled Supreme Court.” Like Warren, he called on Biden to use “remaining legal routes” to secure debt relief through executive power.
Even Justice Elena Kagan puts forward a wild hypothetical in her dissent. She asks her readers to imagine that a nuclear dirty bomb has gone off in a major city. In response, the secretary of education chooses to forgive $10,000 in student loans for survivors of the attack. If that’s legal, she argues, then surely Biden’s decision to forgive tens of thousands of college-educated voters’ student loans, at a price tag of $500 billion, is also legal.
Not only is this rhetoric completely out of proportion, it is disingenuous. It’s symptomatic of the progressive takeover of the Democratic Party, which has moved Democrats from playing a prominent role in higher education reform to the la-la land of “free college” and unconcealed executive overreach. It’s clear that Biden and other Democratic leaders are speaking only to a narrow swath of their constituencies in a blatant attempt to energize their base heading into the next election cycle.
Unfortunately, Democrats are already preparing to mount a counteroffensive.
Last Friday, Biden announced that the Department of Education would pursue another legal avenue, taking a cue from his party’s progressive wing, and attempt to forgive student loans under the Higher Education Act, rather than the HEROES Act. Instead of using the ruling in Biden v. Nebraska as an opportunity to work with Republicans to accomplish needed reforms to our nation’s higher education system, Democrats have chosen to focus on bad policy and executive overreach.
Democrats had the chance to accomplish debt forgiveness through Congress for two years when they controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress from 2021 to 2023. They didn’t do it, because it’s a bad policy idea that doesn’t even have unanimous support of their own party.
Republicans have put forward
pragmatic higher education reforms
that confront tuition inflation, poor student outcomes, and excessive borrowing. And, get this: These proposals are constitutional, can go through the normal legislative process, and will actually confront the structural issues facing American higher education.
Rather than going back to the drawing board in the Oval Office, Democrats should roll up their sleeves and head to the negotiating table with their congressional colleagues. Republicans are waiting for them.
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Beth Akers is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she focuses on the economics of higher education.
