Biden Is Taking Applications for Student Loan Forgiveness Despite Lawsuits
(RightWing.org) – President Joe Biden’s expensive new student loan forgiveness program is facing a barrage of legal challenges, but that hasn’t stopped him from pushing ahead with the controversial plan. This week, he announced that the scheme is now open for applications.
Tens of millions of Americans across the US are now eligible to apply for so-called #StudentLoanForgiveness despite a number of lawsuits opposing the scheme.
“It’s simple and it’s easy, it’s fast,” Biden said. https://t.co/IxYWApWi2D
— The Epoch Times (@EpochTimes) October 18, 2022
On October 17, the White House released a statement from Biden announcing that a new website was about to go online, allowing people to apply for a debt write-off worth up to $20,000. According to the president, the “simple” application process is a “gamechanger[sic] for millions of Americans,” but the whole plan is a widely criticized move that six states are fighting to block in the courts.
At the end of September, the attorneys general of Arkansas, Iowa, South Carolina, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska filed a lawsuit in Missouri that called the debt relief law “unlawful and arbitrary” and demanded it be scrapped. The states say the administration’s legal justification for the move — the 2003 Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act — doesn’t apply because it only authorizes debt cancellation during a war or national emergency and then only up to harm caused by the borrower’s federal loans. Biden’s program doesn’t even attempt to target relief; it plans to hand out cash to anyone with federal student debt.
The administration says it will grant the first wave of debt relief this month and take applications until December 31. Biden is in a real rush to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on the scheme.
The question is, will the courts let him push ahead with it?
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