Circuit court judge axes Biden plan to end $475 billion in student loans
Biden’s student loan cancellation plans have consistently run into legal challenges.
A Department of Education official said that ‘the Biden administration misled students into believing their debt would simply disappear, despite the law being clear that a taxpayer-funded bailout is blatant executive overreach.’
A federal judge recently stopped a Biden administration plan to cancel out $475 billion in student loan debt.
Judge L. Steven Grasz of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals issued the judgment blocking former President Joe Biden’s attempt to cancel student loans on Tuesday.
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The judge accused then-Education Secretary Miguel Cardona of going “well beyond this authority by designing a plan where loans are largely forgiven rather than repaid.”
According to certain estimates, if not blocked by the court, Biden’s plan would have cost taxpayers $475 billion, the New York Post wrote.
Several state attorneys general issued a legal challenge to the student loan cancellation, the Post reported.
Acting undersecretary at the Department of Education James Bergeron said the judge’s decision “affirmed what we’ve known all along: the Biden administration misled students into believing their debt would simply disappear, despite the law being clear that a taxpayer-funded bailout is blatant executive overreach.”
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This was not the only attempt by the Biden administration to cancel student loan debts, and these efforts have attracted widespread controversy in the past. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), for example, published a Jan. 2 report condemning the Biden administration’s “illegal activities involving federal student loan programs [that] are unprecedented both in scope and impact on hardworking taxpayers.”
Biden’s student loan cancellation plans faced numerous other legal challenges throughout his term.