By Ben RItz
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments this week on the constitutionality of President Biden’s attempt to cancel up to $20,000 in student loans per borrower via executive action last year. Many proponents of the move, including the Biden administration itself, have argued that not only is the move itself legal but that it is wrong for the courts to even entertain the pending challenges to its legitimacy. Whether one thinks the plan itself is lawful or not, everyone should be grateful that the courts are so far rejecting this argument and taking a serious look at the merits of the plan itself because failure to do so could have catastrophic long-term implications.
The Biden administration says that it has the authority to grant mass debt cancellation under the HEROES Act: a law passed in 2003 that gives the Secretary of Education authority to adjust the terms of any loan it holds during national emergencies. The law was introduced to make it easier to discharge debt for victims of terrorism and veterans who were injured or killed fighting the War on Terror, but the Biden administration argues that the law’s text gives them broad discretion to provide relief for anyone who lived through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Several lawsuits claimed this broad interpretation was an abuse of the HEROES Act authority that went well beyond Congress’s intent in passing the law. The answer to this legal question has serious implications for our constitutional system, which entrusts Congress with the power of the purse. If allowed to proceed, Biden’s debt cancellation move would cost taxpayers over $400 billion. That would be one of the biggest expenditures of public funds without explicit Congressional appropriation.
