Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a lawsuit against President Joe Biden and the Department of Education on Tuesday, challenging the White House’s newest plan for student loan cancelation.
Bailey, a Republican, was joined by the attorneys general of six other states in the lawsuit, which seeks to block a Biden plan to cancel the student debt of millions of borrowers by placing the responsibility of the debt into the hands of taxpayers.
“With the stroke of his pen, Joe Biden is attempting to saddle working Missourians with a half trillion dollars in college debt,” Bailey said in a statement. “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 lawsuit comes after the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a blow to another Biden student debt cancelation attempt last year, when, Bailey argues, the White House was trying to “force teachers, truckers, and farmers to pay for the student loan debt of other Americans — to the enormous tune of $430 billion.”
The high court majority decided that the Biden administration could not “unilaterally alter large sections of the American economy,” according to the 6-3 opinion in Biden v. Nebraska.
“Undeterred, the President is at it again, even bragging that ‘the Supreme Court blocked it. They blocked it. But that didn’t stop me,’” Bailey said in the lawsuit.
A Missouri challenge was pivotal in the Supreme Court’s decision against the Biden administration on this matter the first time. Bailey had argued the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, a major student loan servicing company, was harmed by the program. Bailey made similar arguments in the newest suit.
Bailey also argued in his lawsuit that Biden’s new scheme, the Saving On A Valuable Education plan is actually more costly than the prior attempt, to the tune of $475 billion across 10 years.
The lawsuit poses a similar challenge to another one filed by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach last month. Kobach, a Republican, is leading a coalition of 11 state attorneys general, and he said at the time that the Biden administration wants to “steal from the poor and give to the rich. He is forcing people who did not go to college, or who worked their way through college, to pay for the loans of those who ran up exorbitant student debt.”
Bailey’s challenge also laid out a pattern through which the Biden administration has overstepped its authority, “from imposing unlawful vaccine mandates across the country, to imposing unlawful and backbreaking regulations on energy producers, to arrogating for himself the power to prohibit every landlord in the nation from initiating eviction proceedings.”
The Biden debt scheme would cancel accrued interest on student loans for roughly 23 million debt holders, eliminate entirely the student debt of roughly four million borrowers, and ultimately give $5,000 in debt relief to 10 million people, according to the plan the White House unveiled Monday.
Members of the Biden administration have been on a public relations tour touting the debt cancelation plan this week. Biden spoke Monday at Madison Area Technical College in Wisconsin, while Vice President Kamala Harris was dispatched to Philadelphia, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona participated in an event in New York City, and second gentleman Douglas Emhoff traveled to Arizona.
An Education Department spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that, while the agency does not comment on pending litigation, it will continue pushing for student debt relief. The spokesman noted that Congress gave the agency the authority to define income-driven repayments in 1993 and that the SAVE plan is the fourth time the authority has been used.
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“From day one, the Biden-Harris Administration has been fighting to fix a broken student loan system, and part of that is creating the most affordable student loan repayment plan ever that is lowering monthly payments, protecting millions of borrowers from runaway interest and getting borrowers closer to debt forgiveness faster,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “The Biden-Harris Administration won’t stop fighting to provide support and relief to borrowers across the country – no matter how many times Republican elected officials try to stop us.”
Bailey’s lawsuit was joined by the attorneys general of Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Dakota, Ohio, and Oklahoma.
