Senate Republicans try new tactic to overturn Biden’s student loan forgiveness
Jeremiah Poff
A trio of Senate Republicans announced Friday that they intend to introduce a resolution under the Congressional Review Act that would overturn President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive a wide swath of federally held student loans.
The announcement from Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), John Cornyn (R-TX), and Joni Ernst (R-IA) comes after the Government Accountability Office determined that the president’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student loans qualifies as a rule subject to the Administrative Procedures Act and can be overturned through a Congressional Review Act resolution.
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QUIET BIDEN STUDENT LOAN FORGIVENESS FOR 200,000 BORROWERS GAVE BLACK EYE TO COLLEGES
Opponents of the plan, including Cassidy and other congressional Republicans, have said the forgiveness plan is unfair to people who did not take out loans, and have criticized the cost, which the Congressional Budget Office has pegged at $400 billion over the next decade.
“President Biden’s student loan scheme does not ‘forgive’ debt. It just transfers the burden from those who willingly took out loans to those who never went to college or sacrificed to pay their loans off,” Cassidy said. “This resolution prevents these Americans, whose debts look different from the favored group the Biden administration has selected, from picking up the bill for this irresponsible and unfair policy.”
The Congressional Review Act allows Congress, by a simple majority of both chambers, to overturn regulations enacted by executive branch agencies. However, a presidential signature is still required.
The Friday report from the Government Accountability Office rejected claims from the Department of Education that the loan forgiveness plan was “not … rulemaking, but a one-time, fact-bound application of existing and statutorily prescribed waiver and modification authority.”
The Biden administration had argued that the loan cancellation plan was not a rule or regulation during oral arguments at the Supreme Court last month.
The GAO made no judgment on the legality of the plan, treating it as an exercise of the department’s authority under the HEROES Act, which the administration invoked to enact the plan.
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“We hold only that a valid exercise of authority under the HEROES Act is subject to CRA,” the GAO report said. “We need not reach the more specific conclusion about the substantive validity of ED’s Waivers and Modifications at issue in the Supreme Court’s decision in Biden v. Nebraska in order to reach a conclusion under CRA.”
The Washington Examiner reached out to the White House for comment.