In June 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled against President Joe Biden’s unconstitutional bailouts for student debt. In August 2023, Biden ruled in favor of himself and began the process of handing out $39 billion in taxpayer funds to wipe out student loans for the wealthy and unprincipled.
As Americans have come to expect from the tyrannical overlord, the president used the power of the pen to thwart the will of the people via executive order.
It turns out that the pen is, indeed, mightier than the sword. Or, to the Biden administration, mightier than SCOTUS.
The U.S. Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona gleefully announced that more than 800,000 borrowers can continue to purchase big-ticket items and not meet their financial obligations. According to the DOE, these debtors can expect nearly $40 billion in taxpayer money to be automatically applied to their debts over the next few weeks.
At the time of the SCOTUS ruling, Biden pledged that he would “stop at nothing” to erase student debt for working middle-class families. What struck many Americans was the classification of someone earning $125,000 ($250,000 for married couples) as middle class. Per the White House Fact Sheet regarding student debt relief, “no high-income individual or high-income household – in the top 5% of incomes – will benefit from this action.”
According to Forbes, the average salary across the nation is just under $60,000. Biden’s wish is that average people, often without degrees or college debt of their own, shoulder the debt for borrowers making twice their salary.
Fox News host Greg Gutfeld didn’t hold back on expressing his feelings about Biden’s move, calling it “disgusting.” He observed, “You’re getting American taxpayers to pay for a gift that benefits Democrats who don’t need it.” He added, “This isn’t like welfare or unemployment or food stamps. It’s a gift that you and I pay that is given to upper-class white art history majors who can then spend that money they would’ve spent on the loan on holidays in the Hamptons.”
In addition to the executive order, the Biden administration continues to look for loopholes to the SCOTUS ruling. Just as Democrats were able to pass the unconstitutional Affordable Care Act’s penalty for having no insurance by reclassifying it as a “tax,” the current administration will continue to play word games until they find one they can win. But the only weapon in their arsenal is the phrase within the Higher Education Act which states that the U.S. Secretary of Education can “modify, compromise, waive, or release any right, title, claim, lien, or demand, however acquired, including any equity or any right of redemption.”
Democrats take this piece of phrase out of context, eliminating the beginning of the sentence, “In the performance of, and with respect to, the functions, powers, and duties, vested in him by this part, the Secretary may—”
In other words, Biden and Cardona overstepped their legal limitations. As per the SOTUS ruling, the president doesn’t have the legal authority to simply spend money unless it was authorized by Congress. Likewise, the Higher Education Act permits the U.S. Secretary of Education to discharge or modify student loans, but only after Congress has authorized them to do so.
By ignoring the SCOTUS ruling, Biden has cemented his spot as a dictator. The only way to lawfully circumvent a SCOTUS ruling is through a constitutional amendment or a new SCOTUS ruling. This can only be done through Congress.
Not by an executive order.
The administration is banking on one simple fact: the court can make decisions but has no legal authority to enforce its rulings.
In July, liberal law professors urged Biden to ignore the SCOTUS and take action to uphold affirmative action after it was struck down as unconstitutional by the highest court in the land. At the time, the professors thought that the SCOTUS decision should be ignored because it was “unpopular with Americans.”
In that case, as in the student debt bailout, however, the court of public opinion is not on Biden’s side. Most Americans do not support using race as a basis for admission to college, and only 39% support student loan forgiveness.
Americans recognize the play as a bribe-for-votes scheme. The timing of the order is suspect, falling right in the middle of the ever-increasing evidence of Biden’s corruption and influence-pandering. The ploy might earn a temporary bump in favorability, but as more Biden criminal activity comes to light, it might not be enough to save the floundering president’s chances of a second term.
Biden needs to sign an executive order declaring himself the winner of the 2024 election. It would be as lawful as the one he just issued.
