Biden’s absurd defense for debt amnesty power grab
Washington Examiner
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When then-President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency to secure $10 billion to finish the existing wall on the southern border, Democrats uniformly and correctly called foul. Congress had explicitly denied Trump that money, and it was a clear abuse of his authority to claim emergency powers to go around them.
Now that President Joe Biden is in the White House, however, Democrats are suddenly just fine with the use of emergency powers to go around Congress and accomplish partisan policy goals. This week, the Department of Justice filed its brief with the Supreme Court detailing its legal justification for Biden canceling $400 billion in student debt, but nary a Democrat complained.
BIDEN BACKS HIS ADMINISTRATION INTO A PUDDLE
In the wake of 9/11, Congress passed the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students, or HEROES, Act. For military service members and those in the National Guard who are called to duty in war or a “national emergency,” the HEROES Act protects them from student debt payments while they are serving. The rationale was that while men and women are sacrificing their time to protect us, they should not have to pay their student loans.
This same section of the HEROES Act also allows the secretary of education to suspend loan payments for those who live in or are employed in “an area that is declared a disaster” as well as for those who “suffered direct economic hardship as a direct result of a … national emergency.”
Biden claims that since both he and Trump identified COVID as a national emergency and COVID caused economic hardship, literally everyone in the country is eligible for student loan amnesty.
This stretches the president’s emergency powers much too far. Maybe if Biden had limited his loan amnesty to those in industries heavily affected by COVID, such as travel or dining, he might have a legal leg to stand on. But with Biden bragging for months now that the economy is fully recovered from COVID, he has no legal justification for granting blanket relief to everyone.
Considering the Supreme Court’s recent rulings on the “major questions” doctrine, which requires clear congressional intent when delegating powers of “vast economic or political significance,” it is highly likely the court will overturn Biden’s student debt amnesty program.
But Congress will not always have a principled court there to bail it out. Members of both parties, members who are concerned about the abuse of executive power, should comb through existing statutes and make sure seemingly narrow delegations of authority like the HEROES Act can’t be abused by presidents like Biden and Trump.
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