The Biden-Harris team has signaled that it’s gearing up for an “October Surprise” on student loan cancellation — although it might come even sooner, sneaking in before early voting starts.
Once again, they are trying to shift hundreds of billions of dollars in loans onto the 90% of Americans who don’t owe student debt, to gain favor with voters who do.
And this time they’ve added a brazen direct-marketing campaign to appeal to those indebted voters, just ahead of the presidential election.
Their new loan-forgiveness effort is particularly devious because it is designed with the administration’s previous court losses in mind.
The Department of Education has asked borrowers who may wish to opt out of the imminent forgiveness plan — for tax liability or other reasons — to notify them by Aug. 30.
That means the administration’s final plan — potentially canceling at least $147 billion in loans — could be issued as soon as the following day.
However, the department has kept that plan under wraps, making it difficult for borrowers to make an informed choice — and, crucially, making it harder for states to sue as they have previously.
The Biden-Harris team knows that its actions are illegal, and courts will likely rule against them.
So they may be planning to trigger loan cancellations the moment the department publishes its final rule, in a ruthless effort to avoid accountability or give taxpayers their day in court.
Rather than simply adapting to their prior failures by following the law, they are instead looking for better ways to prevent courts from stopping them.
Nancy Pelosi herself has said, “People think that the president of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not. He can postpone. He can delay. But he does not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress.”
That’s how we know this is about politics, not about enacting good policy or respecting the law.
And Biden-Harris Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has removed all doubt.
Shortly after last month’s assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, the then Biden-Harris campaign took down its political ads for a short time.
Instead of following suit, Cardona sent partisan messages to millions of borrowers using official government email.
In these potentially illegal communications defending their undoubtedly illegal loan programs, Cardona decried the administration’s losses in court, accusing “Republican elected officials” of “siding with special interests.”
Apparently, some consider hardworking taxpayers who pay their own debts and do not wish to be forced to pay the debts of others to be “special interests.”
This is not the first time Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and their friends on the left have attempted to use student loans to boost their election odds.
When they first tried to cancel hundreds of billions of dollars in loans in 2022, the Supreme Court made clear that the administration could not institute “a mass debt cancellation program” — because such powers “are ones that Congress would likely have intended for itself.”
But President Biden immediately vowed to ignore the court’s rulings.
“The Supreme Court tried to block me from relieving student debt,” he said this year. “But they didn’t stop me.”
Another attempt, the “SAVE” loan repayment plan, would have made taxpayers rather than borrowers repay a significant share of the loans, but 18 principled state attorneys general sued to stop the program from going into effect. A federal appeals court has put the entire plan on hold.
Despite the administration’s abysmal record in court, some forgiveness efforts have gone unchallenged. About $400 billion of student loan debt has already been expunged through loan pauses, one-time cancellations and other efforts.
State attorneys general will need to act once more if they wish to stop this new tranche of loan forgiveness and prevent this disgraceful — and obvious — vote-buying scheme.
Before the final loan cancellation regulations go into effect, they must convince a judge that the Biden-Harris team is following a familiar pattern.
This administration keeps losing in court because what it is doing is illegal, and they know it.
Yet the team that crows about “defending democracy” will use its official government power to subvert justice and stay in control.
More than two dozen Republican attorneys general have the power to stop them.
But they need to take bold action — and they have a short window of time in which to do it.
Michael Brickman is an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on higher education and cutting-edge innovation in education reform. He concurrently advises companies, nonprofits, and investors on the innovations that are changing the way we work and learn.
Reprinted with Permission from AEI – By Michael Brickman
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.