The lawlessness of President Joe Biden‘s power grabs is made especially clear when even Democratic-appointed judges repeatedly smack them down.
Two judges appointed by left-wing former President Barack Obama did so this week, putting Biden’s student loan vote-buying scheme into merited limbo. The even better news is that by upholding the Constitution’s separation of powers, the judges are also helping save taxpayers nearly half a trillion dollars.
The two cases in district courts, one in Kansas and one in Missouri, involved Biden’s second attempt via executive fiat to transfer loans on a massive scale from the students who borrowed the money to taxpayers who did not. The Supreme Court struck down Biden’s first attempt, so this time, his appointees at the Education Department cited a different law to claim authority for the debt largesse.
Loan forgiveness makes suckers of responsible former students who paid back their federally guaranteed loans. It also, according to estimates accepted by one of the courts, adds at least $475 billion over 10 years to the federal debt. Those who already paid full tuition and people who never attended college would foot that bill.
Biden figures that half a trillion dollars or extra fiscal irresponsibility is worth the price if it attracts the votes of 4 million deadbeat borrowers who would see their obligations eliminated, plus another 30 million who would walk away from at least part of what they owe.
As the judges in the two cases noted, though, only Congress, not the executive branch, has constitutional authority to appropriate taxpayer dollars. Both judges concluded that Congress did not give the president or his appointees the power to spend money from the Treasury to repay loans on this massive scale. Both judges allowed the Education Department to alter the schedule of borrowers’ repayments but not to write off the loans entirely.
“Congress has made it clear under what circumstances loan forgiveness is permitted, and the [Biden] plan is not one of those circumstances,” Judge John Ross of the Eastern District of Missouri wrote. “The plain text of the statute does not support [Biden’s] position.”
Likewise, Judge Daniel Crabtree of the District of Kansas wrote that Biden was attempting “an enormous and transformative expansion in statutory authority without clear congressional authorization.”
The judges, therefore, entered nationwide preliminary injunctions blocking further loan forgiveness under the Biden scheme. These last only until and unless the courts can more fully examine the merits of both sides’ arguments, and Biden can appeal to higher courts to overturn the rulings. But both judges averred that Biden is “likely” to lose in the long run.
Nobody can plausibly say this is a right-wing legal hit job against a Biden initiative. Crabtree even wrote, twice, that he entered his order against Biden’s team only “reluctantly.” Still, he and Ross, to their credit, faithfully applied the text of student loan statutes rather than letting Biden twist it or invent new powers for political purposes.
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The Biden administration has made a habit of attempting improper power grabs only to be rebuked by the courts for doing so. Its executive abuses have been stymied on subjects ranging from left-wing gender ideology to washing-machine restrictions to speech censorship, illegal immigrant deportation bans, race-based relief for farmers, energy-lease moratoria, and more. For all his talk against a supposed “war on democracy,” it is Biden who is violating democratic processes by trying to dictate law from the Oval Office to make end-runs around elected legislators.
The Constitution’s framers wisely designed effective checks against such presidential perfidy. For the framers’ wisdom and skill, the public owes a debt of gratitude.