Only the politically blind or titanically naïve in America expected Joe Biden to stop engaging in his underhanded college debt shifting scheme when the Supreme Court of the United States last year told him to stop.
At the time, Americans who were knowledgeable about the U.S. Constitution, ethics, and U.S. history knew the inapplicability of the “HEROES Act” under which the previous (Trump) administration based its reasoning when it put a “pause” on college debt payments during the insane COVID lockdown “emergency.” Those canny Americans knew that the “HEROES Act” is a statute that, while soldiers are called into action by the feds, allows the feds to block private lenders from demanding payment of loans they’d given to soldiers.
Those canny Americans agreed with the Supreme Court majority, knowing that it was too far a stretch to apply the “HEROES Act” to civilians under a so-called “pandemic.” And, to put the finest points on the ruling last year, many people also recognized that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t really allow the feds to block debt collection from soldiers who voluntarily enter the military in the first place – a general sentiment that David Crockett expressed on the floor of Congress in 1830, and those Americans also know that the U.S. Constitution never granted the feds the power to offer “college loans” in the first place, let alone forgive the debt and make us taxpayers pick up the tab.
Of course, immediately after that 2023 Supreme Court decision blocking Biden’s college “debt forgiveness plan” – i.e. scheme to make all of us pay – Amtrak Joe’s plotters triggered new ways to keep the “college debt forgiveness” socialism going.
Yesterday, the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked Biden’s latest attempt.
It’s merely an injunction, stopping the latest Department of Education (DOE) scheme until the entire case is heard by the full court, but it sheds light on major problems in US politics and the willingness of politicians to discard their constitutional oaths in order to pander to constituencies, and in order to create new constituencies.
The case sees at least short-term success for seven state governments (all, currently run by Republicans), led by Missouri, in their attempt to widen a lower court’s partial block of Biden’s recent so-called “SAVE” debt forgiveness plan.
As Nate Raymond reports for Reuters:
"The St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request, opens new tab by seven Republican-led states to put on hold parts of the U.S. Department of Education's debt relief plan that had not already been blocked by a lower-court judge.
That ruling last month by U.S. District Judge John Ross in St. Louis had blocked the department from granting further loan forgiveness under the administration's Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan but had not blocked all of the plan.”
But, what does the “SAVE” scheme do?
As Investopia reported in September, 2023:
“The Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan is an income-driven repayment (IDR) plan for student loan borrowers. The plan sets monthly payments at 5% to 10% of discretionary income and provides forgiveness for loan balances after 20 or 25 years. Under a new formula for calculating discretionary income, an estimated 1 million low-income borrowers would qualify for a $0 monthly student loan payment.”
In other words, the universities and colleges, most of which already get federal grants for politically-favored plans pushing collectivist ideology, receive the tuition money they’ve demanded, but the students don’t have to pay the federal loans they took to get the so-called “university education.”
You and I – and other Americans -- pay.
Beyond the unconstitutional nature of this, let’s just look at two ethical facets.
First, the obvious. You and I and other Americans never took on this debt, and we don’t give our “tacit consent” to the diktats of politicians merely because we don’t run to some other country (where a central government also would be pushing people around). The students make their own choices, and we are SUPPOSED to be free – meaning free of freeloaders whom politicians put on their rhetorical menus as the “underprivileged of the day.”
Second, perhaps the boosters of “SAVE” and other government “debt forgiveness” plans might try imagining a plan that worked in the opposite direction.
Instead of “forgiving” debt or decreasing the debt payments for college students and grads, what if the government told the loan recipients they had to pay more? What if the government upwardly changed the parameters of its loans, ex post facto?
Related: Biden's Student Debt 'Forgiveness' Is a Scam To Buy Votes From Idiots
The US Constitution forbids ex post facto statutes that punish people, and the concept also applies to the feds trying to change previous legal parameters in some seeming, or purported-to-be, “positive” manner – at the expense of the rest of us.
Reuters notes that the legal team working for the state governments understands this, very well. They saw a lower court block portions of Biden’s scheme, but not all of it, and they recognize the larger problem, thus seeing them bring this issue to the Eighth Circuit and seeing yesterday’s injunction against all of Biden’s debt-shifting scheme.
“State attorneys general led by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey subsequently last week asked the 8th Circuit to block the rest of the SAVE Plan. The court did so through a one-page order granting an administrative stay.
Bailey on the social platform X hailed the ruling as a ‘huge win for every American who still believes in paying their own way.’ He said the student loan plan ‘would have saddled working Americans with half-a-trillion dollars in Ivy League debt.’"
Regardless of whether the debt is “Ivy League” or it is for technical school is irrelevant. The principle is what counts, and until more Americans acknowledge the immorality of debt-shifting, socialism, and welfarist policies, until more Americans see that this money is not the government’s to give, but, instead, is supposed to belong to the people who earned it, until more Americans stop bobble-head-nodding to the “culture of victimhood” rhetoric politicians serve up about the poor, victimized college students, until more Americans stand up for the so-called “rules” of the US Constitution – more of these political shenanigans will take place.
If Americans truly care about the “next generation,” they can stop politicians’ pandering schemes and redistribution of wealth. It’s immoral, and in a nation that adds approximately a trillion dollars in debt every 100 days, those future generations also are enslaved, before they’re born.
How is that the “land of the free?”