Missouri among states suing Biden administration over student debt scheme

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is taking the lead in a lawsuit against the Biden administration’s latest plan to cancel billions of dollars in student debt.

“With the stroke of his pen, Joe Biden is attempting to saddle working Missourians with a half-trillion dollars in college debt,” Bailey said, according to “National Revie.” “The United States Constitution makes clear that the president lacks the authority to unilaterally ‘cancel’ student loan debt for millions of Americans without express permission from Congress.

“The president does not get to thwart the Constitution when it suits his political agenda. I’m filing suit to halt his brazen attempt to curry favor with some citizens by forcing others to shoulder their debts. The constitution will continue to mean something as long as I’m attorney general.”

The joint lawsuit targets Biden’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) repayment program, which will cost Americans an estimated $750 billion over the next 10 years. This amount is $45 billion more than the price tag attached to the White House’s previous student-loan forgiveness plan that the Supreme Court struck down last June.

The Court ruled that Biden cannot “unilaterally alter large sections of the American economy” through the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students (HEROES) Act, according to the 6–3 opinion in Biden v. Nebraska. In this case, Missouri played a notable role in challenging the $430 billion forgiveness program.

“Yet again, the president is unilaterally trying to impose an extraordinarily expensive and controversial policy that he could not get through Congress,” the 62-page lawsuit said. “This latest attempt to sidestep the Constitution is only the most recent instance in a long but troubling pattern of the president relying on innocuous language from decades-old statutes to impose drastic, costly policy changes on the American people without their consent.”

Attorneys general Tim Griffin of Arkansas, Ashley Moody of Florida, Christopher Carr of Georgia, Drew Wrigley of North Dakota, Dave Yost of Ohio and Gentner Drummond of Oklahoma joined Bailey in challenging Biden’s debt-cancellation agenda.

–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice

Photo: Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Poland, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0