The Supreme Court heard arguments today about President Biden's student loan forgiveness program. Most of the news reports suggest that a majority of the court was skeptical that Biden had the authority to enact this program via executive action.
The Supreme Court currently has before it a number of cases that could demonstrate its rank partisanship. We'll have to wait and see how it rules on them before we know. However, I think liberals should steel themselves for a legitimate loss in the student loan case. It's not open-and-shut, but there's a reasonable argument to be made that permanent mass debt forgiveness was not the intent of the HEROES Act, which provides the authority for Biden's program.
The main arguments mostly revolve around the meaning of the president's authority to “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision” of the student loan program during an emergency. But is outright forgiveness a "statutory or regulatory" provision? This is genuinely arguable, and it's not unreasonable to conclude that the legislative record doesn't support it. This is especially the case for a large-scale forgiveness program that doesn't make any distinction between those who suffered financial setbacks during the pandemic and those who didn't.
I don't know how I'd vote if I were on the Supreme Court. I'd have to study the issues more closely. But some disagreements are just that: disagreements, not partisan hackery. The student loan dispute is such a case.
I, too, don't know if Biden really has the authority. But I am still amazed that so many people think this is good politics. Do they not understand how many people are pissed about it? Maybe they wouldn't have voted D, but they aren't entirely wrong.
Agreed. I'd like it a lot, however, if we settled on non-egregious repayment plan that doesn't double the cost of the loan to the borrower. That's the real crime and crisis here. If the solution landed somewhere along these lines: here is your original loan amount, your repayment over time is _____ monthly and we're eliminating the interest altogether. I think you'd get everyone on board.
Do you have a way to do this that doesn't involve enabling legislation?
It seems like if the secretary of education can "waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision," it's a lesser leap to reset all student loan interest rates to zero than it is to wipe out $10-20k worth of balances for debtors below certain income levels.
This Supreme Court would probably still find some reason that it's an unconstitutional grant of legislative authority to the executive or some such, though, so your point remains.
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I don't get it... on what planet are loans supposed to be interest free?
Governments routinely make interest free loans for things they think are good ideas.
Fewer people are pissed about it than benefit from it/like it. I think the narrative that it's not good politics comes solely from people in positions of privilege. Many of whom seem to simply be butthurt.
I disagree. I definitely think more people are pissed about it than will benefit from it. Some people are both. I'm pissed about it but will benefit from it as my wife still has a few thousand in outstanding loans from graduate school.
And why is the opinion of people "in privilege" any less valid than the opinion of others? And, I'm not sure what "butthurt" is but sounds like that is synonymous with pissed so not sure what your point is.
"Butthurt" is a specific kind of angry - in sum, it's being angry for stupid reasons or about something stupid, or being overly angry or raging about something that's merely annoying.
I never said that their opinions mattered less. It's that they think their opinions should matter more. They don't, except insofar as our systems are set up to prefer their opinions. They're privileged opinions, after all - that's kind of by definition.
Priviledge is quite irrelevant but in fact it's really a strawman to justify the poster's own opinion.
People like you ignore that even if this goes through, baby boomers will still have been treated far more generously in terms of paying for univerity education than this generation. All american baby boomers had the opportunity of getting a university education with the state covering at least 80% of the cost if they went to a state school. State schools get less than 10% of the education budgets today from tax dollars. Baby Boomers saying this plan is unfair to them cause they paid their tuition, are right that its unfair, but it is they who made out like bandits at tax payer expense, not the other way around.
Amusing the utilisation of Univ priviledged phrases like "the narrative... from people in positions of privledge" with phraseology dripping of educated class priviledge.
While ignoring the reality of data showing a large number of econmically stressed downwardly mobile non-Uni graduat and never-Uni-going working class voters who regard the action as a hand-out to snotty Uni going youth whingers.
And insofar as that not-very-online visible and not-very-verbal nor-activist class is a majority overall of population and notably of voting population - most particularly solid specific majorities in specific electoral geographies...
and you have a clear picture of insular, self-regarding Uni-leavers back-patting on their own moral superiority adn engaging in self-deception on the overall political balance.
Of course as a multi-Uni-degree holding egghead myself can understand the self-deception, but it is self-deception.
But the irony here is a lot of the folks getting the forgiveness are blue collar kids who went to trade schools never graduated but are stuck paying off the loans for degrees they never got. Totally not your snot nosed high and mighty philosophy grad.
The self projection in your posts is comically strong. Off the charts. lol.
' insular, self-regarding Uni-leavers back-patting on their own moral superiority adn engaging in self-deception' - this projection describes nearly all of your posts. A bit funny huh?
The other things besides numbers are intensity and existing partisan affiliation. If the people pissed off by student loan forgiveness are people who would vote Republican any way, then they don't matter to the calculation of political benefit/loss to the Democrats. If the political independents who benefit are likely to be swayed to vote Democrat, whereas the independents who are pissed off regard it as not important enough to sway their vote, it's good politics.
Most of the polling on it was last fall, when the public was more or less evenly split. Independents leaned toward support and Dems were strongly in support. It is absolutely good politics to do things the base supports. That's politics 101.
If you think most people hate it, that may be a sign of who you hang with.
"If you think most people hate it, that may be a sign of who you hang with."
Ding ding ding!
If you're pissed about this, that is a you problem. It makes you a terrible person to be upset that people are getting out from under crushing student loan debt.
Why doesn't that apply equally to house mortgages, small business loans, and stock margin loans?
But I am still amazed that so many people think this is good politics. Do they not understand how many people are pissed about it?
I thought that, too, but the midterms didn't bear it out.
Broad language provides SCOTUS the power to (arbitrarily) interpret its boundaries. OTOH, it's been clear for a while now that a conservative SCOTUS will (arbitrarily) dictate the scope of laws even when they're concise, on account that it is willing to (arbitrarily) apply a new layer of standard(s) --namely originalism and textualism -- to achieve its goal(s), one of which is to cancel progressive policy. So long as they need new ways to achieve their goal(s), there is no shortage of -isms that the FedSoc can't invent.
Their most popular ism is we-got-six-votes-and-what-are-you-gonna-do-about-it-ism.
+1
A-yup. Anybody care to place a bet on how this court is going to rule? It's not contingent on your explaining their purported reasoning for their decision.
IDK man, "waive" seems pretty clear to me. And if the loans exist because of "statute"...
Same. Seems pretty clear to me, too.
I would actually think that attaching a test for "did you suffer financial losses" would make it less clear.
While there may be an argument against the administration’s interpretation of the HEROES Act as a pathway for loan forgiveness, the real issue is a question of standing. What harm will the several states (in one case) or the two individuals (in the other) suffer if the administration prevails?
The issue of standing confuses me. They seem to be arguing that an executive order can't go through if it creates winners and losers, but everything creates winners and losers. Isn't their standing based on the idea that they'll make less money servicing loans, or that it's just not fair that they'll get only 10 grand while someone who was poorer when they went to college will get more?
Plenty of executive orders create massive winners and losers. Just look at the Emancipation Proclamation. Sure, you can argue that slave owners, by living in the Confederacy, lacked standing, but any Northern business that made money off of cheap, slave-produced goods could have argued that they were getting the short end of the stick. And, apparently, you'd just need one of them to bring a case.
Standing is a slippery issue that has to be applied with care; it's more a matter of policy than of principle. My view is that as a matter of policy, standing rules should be applied in such a way as to limit the number of possible challengers to government action, but as a matter of principle should never limit the number of possible challengers to zero. All government action should be subject to judicial review, and there should always be someone with a right to ask for that review.
"But some disagreements are just that: disagreements, not partisan hackery. The student loan dispute is such a case."
Debates about the extent and intent of the HEROES Act may not be partisan hackery. This case reaching the Supreme Court is. As explained here (https://www.virginialawreview.org/articles/standing-and-student-loan-cancellation/) in the Virginia Law Review, and here (https://protectborrowers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/22-506_22-535_Conservative-Law-Scholars_Latham-Watkins_AMICI-CURIAE.pdf) in an amicus brief submitted to the SC, none of the litigants has legitimate standing to sue, and the case should therefore have been thrown out.
It's entirely possible that the Court could make the right decision but make bad law, in the sense that the opinion could be severely lacking in any operational guidance. I mean, "I don't have to eat broccoli" is not exactly a serious legal principle.
What happened to the "during an emergency" part of the HEROES Act? Are we still in an emergency that needs extraordinary authority on the part of the President? There was some alleviation of the special problems of student-loan debtors during the covid emergency, which is presumably consistent with the Act. But the overall student-loan problem was pre-existing, not a result of the covid emergency.
Dictators often seize power during "emergencies" of one sort or another. Widening the ability of the President like this is asking for some future President to extend his authority in ways that liberals may not like. You don't need to be a Republican to see that.
I agree. However, as near as I can tell, the courts already give Republican Presidents carte blanche to use "emergency" powers any way they want. TFG unilaterally imposed a range of tariffs on several countries, most notably China, and justified it under his emergency powers because... yeah, I still have no idea what the emergency was, except maybe that his poll numbers were too low.
What we really need is some clarity from the courts, applied consistently, about what constitutes an "emergency". Better still would be some legislation with language spelling it out in sufficient detail that not even an (alleged) "originalist" or "textualist" could wriggle out of it.
Rather than the courts, it would be better if Congress would provide nice clear guidance on the extent and limitations of presidential emergency powers. It would also be a good thing if emergency powers were reduced, a lot. Legislative paralysis is a very real thing, but it's still Congress's job to make law rather than delegating it all to the president.
In this case they gave clear guidance. In a time of emergency, the Sec of Education was best suited to determine if waivers were appropriate and they clear authority to enact waivers.
Congress made a law. Complaining that Congress should legislate as a way to complain about a specific piece of passed legislation is an odd argument.
From the Heroes Act:
(a) WAIVERS AND MODIFICATIONS.—
(1) IN GENERAL.—Notwithstanding any other provision of
law, unless enacted with specific reference to this section, the
Secretary of Education (referred to in this Act as the ‘‘Sec-
retary’’) may waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provi-
sion applicable to the student financial assistance programs
under title IV of the Act as the Secretary deems necessary
in connection with a war or other military operation or national
emergency to provide the waivers or modifications authorized
by paragraph (2).
...and...
(3) CASE-BY-CASE BASIS.—The Secretary is not required
to exercise the waiver or modification authority under this
section on a case-by-case basis.
If that's not broad enough to cover the student loan forgiveness program, then there may have been trillions in pandemic relief that didn't meet the standard either.
If the Supreme Court rules against the program, it will be widely considered a partisan Republican court striking down a policy of a Democratic administration for reasons that such a court would never use against a Republican administration, which the court blesses with whatever the fuck authority GOP presidents desire.
That would be the correct reading of the decision, not some nuanced interpretation of the law.
If Biden was a GOPer, the court would rule for the program on standing. It would be a cinch.
What I don't see is anything in Title IV of The Higher Education Act of 1965 that allows loan forgiveness either by statute or regulation. Arguably, the President can modify provisions, but cannot create them out of whole cloth. So, what is the provision that is being modified by the executive order?
The provision that the loans must be repaid.
The law explicitly states that he can waive statutory provisions. The need to pay back the money is an explicit statutory provision.
The political angle isn't too bad, assuming Dems can actually attack for a change. Just repeatedly hammer that Republicans took your loan forgiveness away, over and over and over again, to those who care.
Of course it still leaves a lot of people trapped in debt. But this is 'Murica, we only care about real-world effects when those effects happen to me. Right?
I kind of expected this. This is a SCOTUS that is chomping at the bit to smack down a Democratic executive branch with nondelegation doctrine, and this seems like a pretty good case for their purposes. I also think they'd strike down minting a trillion dollar coin.
I'm pretty sure this court won't apply nondelegation doctrine fairly or using some intelligible principle other than "we apply it to things that we don't like, ideologically." I expect them to throw up all sorts of arbitrary barriers to Democratic Presidents and Congresses under this principle.
I should clarify: I think there's a solid argument that Student Loan Forgiveness overstepped executive authority. And I think the majority of this SCOTUS will be in general a bit stricter about executive overreach. HOWEVER, I also think they will use much stricter scrutiny to Democratic initiatives that they don't like, regardless of the law. That's not really uncommon -- beyond their default disposition, courts usually come up with reasons to uphold policies they like and strike down policies they don't. (Balls and strikes my foot.) But this court has already shown themselves to be particularly hackish, so I expect them to be even worse on this score.
It seems to me the Court now only considers whether or not a case is absolutely, totally ridiculous. If it is, plaintiffs are kindly invited to invent a better one. Otherwise the GOP gets what it wants. If the case is "genuinely arguable", liberals don't stand a chance.
I don't know of another democratic country wherein the highest court has so much power and is also so predictably biased.
Kevin, with respect, there is no way for this Court to swat down loan forgiveness in a way that's both consistent with prior votes of all the justices AND doesn't demonstrate rank partisanship.
There just isn't. This is a court with justices that have issued massive grants of power to the executive based on the thinnest of legislative pretexts. To refuse to allow Biden to do this thing that the legislative language is very, very clear on wouldn't be "nonpartisan," it would be "fuck you, democrats."
So what's yer point?
I’ve studied only a few of the Trump court’s decisions, but I still believe this: There may be a legal argument to be made against Biden’s action on the student loan program (which may be why he hesitated for so long to take action), but the Trump justices’ opinions won’t be based on the legal arguments.
All the people that got to buy houses and deduct all their mortgage interest and property taxes in decades past... they sure didn't get a handout that later generations buying houses now are missing out on...
But whatever.
Future Dem presidents (assuming we're allowed to have those after the independent state legislatures start overturning or abolishing elections) will need to implement new programs instantly. It would've been much better if Biden had simply declared all student loan debts were wiped clean on the day he made the announcement months ago... had the Department of Education order "your debt is now $0.00" statements to all the debt holders the very next day so they have proof of the debts being wiped clean... and then dared the Court to reinstate debts after the fact. That's going to be how shit gets done in the future... cause letting any time go by between announcement and implementation simply allow lawsuits to be filed.
Yeah, this. As someone with student loan debt, when I heard Biden’s announcement and then was informed by the Dept. of Ed that it would take a few months to implement, I set my expectations to practically zero. Because, of course it was going to be challenged and a stay issued before implementation. And of course it would be shopped to a favorable District court/Court of Appeals. And of course it would wind up at SCOTUS, and of course…
The mortgage interest deduction was voted on by Congress, just like the various student loan and higher ed deductions that have been voted into tax law over the years.
Student loan forgiveness is different, and there really was no way it would have avoided going to SCOTUS. Writing everything off immediately would have just pissed off more people, and I can totally imagine this SCOTUS reinstating all the balances.
The ability to waive student loan requirements was also voted on by congress. Its right there in the text of the legislation that was approved by Congress. It is stated very clearly.
The language in the Heroes Act is pretty clear. The Ed Secretary has the ability to waive statutory and regulatory provisions associated with student loans during an National Emergency.
Prior to Biden making this decision, literally noone would have argued that the repayment of loans was not a statutory and regulatory provisions.
This is an easy call legally. But the Supreme Legislators may decide that they dont like the Heroes Act and wish it said something different.
Kevins squishy argument that a full waiver might not qualify as a provision doesnt make any sense at all. The type of waiver isnt defined as a 'statutory or regulatory provision', its the item being waived that must fall into that bucket.
I rather suspect Biden did this to appease demands from the left, knowing full well it was unlikely to survive a Supreme Court challenge. Democrats can now say "We tried as hard as we could" while adding to the list of ways in which Republicans punish the middle class.
Quite possible. And such an outcome might even be politically optimal for Democrats.
It is 100% partisan. If Trump had done this, it wouldn't have reached the courts because Democrats aren't craven assholes. This supreme court does not follow any law or constitutional provision. It does not follow any principles. It decides what is good for a) Republicans & b) rich people and that dictates their decisions. The long & winding opinions are just the sophistry to entertain the dullards.
According to Milhiser you got this wrong. And if it's Kevin vs. Milhiser, Milhiser is my bet. He does this for a living.
The Heroes Act is unambiguous in its language. Did the parliament have student loans in mind at the time? Yes, they are mentioned in the text. Is there an upper limit for the price tag? Hell, no! etc.
BTW did you notice how they bellyached about "fairness"? (maybe because they own children don't qualify because they are too rich?). Funny, no? This is a concern for the executive. The only concern for the court is constitutionality. They are not supposed to judge on policy merit. At the very least they should pretend not to judge that way. But they don't even see the need to try.
I think it's the arguments about standing in this case that could (continue to) expose the Court as a partisan court. If a party with a strong standing argument (for instance, MOHELA itself) had sued, I would agree with you. But the standing arguments, particularly in the Texas case, seems almost bizarrely weak. The argument for Missouri's standing is sronger but still a little weak.
Mohela is a creature of the State of Missouri and owned by the State of Missouri. It seems pretty clear that an injury to Mohela is an injury to Missouri.
The standing argument is as to why MOHELA didnt sue. MOHELA is not the State of Missouri, instead it is a nonprofit organization.
.Missouri's argument is that the state will be harmed if MOHELA is financially impacted. The state is suffering loss because MOHELA might have difficulty paying Missouri what it owes.
A similar standing argument would be that your bank could sue anyone who harms you if they feel it might impair your ability to make loan payments that you owe the bank. Maybe the state could sue if you are harmed in a way that might impact your ability to pay taxes. Maybe every company you have a contract with could also sue if they feel it might impair your ability to pay them. All of these parties could sue, even if you refuse to be part of the lawsuit. The damage is to you, but the businesses and parties you are contracted with can sue if they feel that your losses will impact them.
That appears to be a novel argument for standing.
"But is outright forgiveness a "statutory or regulatory" provision?" It's in fact pretty much indisputable that outright forgiveness is a waiving of a statutory provision. Having to pay back the loan is clearly a provision in the statute. But textualists like Alito and Thomas are firmly committed to the idea that if they don't like an explicit piece of the text, they can simply ignore it.