WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden vowed Friday to push ahead with a new plan to provide student loan relief for millions of borrowers while blaming Republican “hypocrisy” for triggering the day's Supreme Court decision that wiped out his original plan.
Biden said payment requirements for student loans would resume in coming weeks, but that he would work under the authority of the Higher Education Act to begin a new program designed to ease borrowers’ threat of default if they fall behind over the next year.
Hours after the Supreme Court ruling, Biden commented from the White House, trying to stay on the political offensive even as the ruling undermined a key promise to young voters who will be vital to his 2024 reelection campaign.
Ticking off what he said were billions of dollars in benefits to the well-to-do under the Trump administration, he said, “These Republican officials just couldn’t bear the thought of providing relief for working class, middle class Americans.”
“The hypocrisy of Republican elected officials is stunning," he said.
Top administration officials said they met for weeks to discuss how to handle the Supreme Court's expected reversal of Biden's original plan.
Jordan Braithwaite, 21, center, an undergrad at Grambling State University, demonstrates Friday outside the Supreme Court in Washington.
The Supreme Court's 6-3 decision, with conservative justices in the majority, said the Biden administration overstepped its authority with the original plan.
The court held that the administration needed Congress' endorsement before undertaking such a costly program. The majority rejected arguments that a bipartisan 2003 law dealing with national emergencies, known as the HEROES Act, gave Biden the power he claimed.
"Six States sued, arguing that the HEROES Act does not authorize the loan cancellation plan. We agree," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.
Justice Elena Kagan, joined by the court's two other liberals, said in a dissent that the majority of the court "overrides the combined judgment of the Legislative and Executive Branches, with the consequence of eliminating loan forgiveness for 43 million Americans."
Roberts, perhaps anticipating negative public reaction and aware of declining approval of the court, added an unusual coda to his opinion, cautioning that the liberals' dissent should not be mistaken for disparagement of the court.
"It is important that the public not be misled either. Any such misperception would be harmful to this institution and our country," the chief justice wrote.
Progressive Democrats in Congress and activists clamored for the White House to offer a swift and substantial response to the court's decision.
President Joe Biden speaks Friday in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington.
Natalia Abrams, president and founder of the Student Debt Crisis Center, said the responsibility falls “squarely” on Biden’s shoulders.
“The president possesses the power, and must summon the will, to secure the essential relief that families across the nation desperately need,” Abrams said in a statement.
Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, one of her party's leading voices on the left, said, “The president has more tools to cancel student debt — and he must use them."
The White House’s efforts to block payments were an attempt to keep a Biden 2020 campaign promise to wipe out student loan debt that was especially popular with young voters and progressives. Both will be vital to Biden in next year’s presidential race — but may be less energized about supporting him after the high court’s decision.
Without action from the Biden administration, loan repayments will resume in October, though interest will begin accruing in September, the Education Department has announced. Payments have been on hold since the start of the coronavirus pandemic more than three years ago.
The forgiveness program would have canceled $10,000 in student loan debt for those making less than $125,000 or households with less than $250,000 in income. Pell Grant recipients, who typically demonstrate more financial need, would have had an additional $10,000 in debt forgiven.
Twenty-six million people applied for relief and 43 million would have been eligible, the administration said. The cost was estimated at $400 billion over 30 years.
Advocacy groups supporting debt cancellation condemned the decision while demanding that Biden find another avenue to fulfill his promise of debt relief.
President Joe Biden speaks about the student debt relief portal beta test Oct. 17 in the South Court Auditorium on the White House complex in Washington.
Republican-led states arguing before the court said the plan would have amounted to a "windfall" for 20 million people who would have seen their entire student debt disappear and been better off than they were before the pandemic.
Biden said GOP officials "had no problem with billions in pandemic-related loans to businesses. … And those loans were forgiven. But when it came to providing relief to millions of hard-working Americans, they did everything in their power to stop it."
In contrast, the administration grounded the need for the sweeping loan forgiveness in the COVID-19 emergency and the continuing negative impacts on people near the bottom of the economic ladder. The declared emergency ended on May 11.
Without the promised loan relief, the administration's top Supreme Court lawyer told the justices, "delinquencies and defaults will surge."
At those arguments, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said her fellow justices would be making a mistake if they took for themselves, instead of leaving it to education experts, "the right to decide how much aid to give" people who would struggle if the program were struck down.
The HEROES Act — the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act — has allowed the secretary of education to waive or modify the terms of federal student loans in connection with a national emergency. The law was primarily intended to keep service members from being hurt financially while they fought in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
