President Joe Biden outraged conservatives this summer when he announced that taxpayers would be on the hook for hundreds of billions worth of student loans. However, it isn’t just Republicans who are bothered by the move.
Former press secretary for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign is upset as well. She recently accused Biden of using loan forgiveness to get votes despite knowing it wouldn’t stand up in court.
Federal judge says student loan plan is unconstitutional
Biden revealed the plan in August, stating that it would allow those who make less than $125,000 per year to walk away from $10,00 worth of debt.
Meanwhile, borrowers who went to college using Pell Grants would be entitled to $20,000 in debt forgiveness. The plan would also cap repayment at 5% of a borrower’s monthly income.
In keeping with my campaign promise, my Administration is announcing a plan to give working and middle class families breathing room as they prepare to resume federal student loan payments in January 2023.
I’ll have more details this afternoon. pic.twitter.com/kuZNqoMe4I
— President Biden (@POTUS) August 24, 2022
Yet as the Washington Examiner noted, the program hit a legal hurdle when it was challenged by the Job Creators Network Foundation (JCNF), a conservative advocacy group.
Judge Mark Pittman of the Northern District of Texas issued an opinion last week in which he agreed with JCNF’s claim that the student loan plan is unconstitutional
“No one can plausibly deny that it is either one of the largest delegations of legislative power to the executive branch, or one of the largest exercises of legislative power without congressional authority in the history of the United States,” Pittman wrote.
Former Sanders staffer calls debt forgiveness a ploy “to induce young voter turn out”
That led to an angry response from Briahna Joy Gray, who worked on Sanders’ 2020 campaign. She put out a series of tweets accusing the Biden administration of acting in bad faith.
“They used the promise of student debt cancellation to induce young voter turnout — knowing it wasn’t going anywhere bc they relied on faulty legal authority,” Gray wrote last Friday. “Hard to convince me the Biden admin didn’t do this intentionally.”
She went on to assert that the president “could’ve immediately canceled student debt instead of making it a means tested program, in which case there wouldn’t have been these opportunities for people to obstruct.”