Biden VETOS Republican bill blocking his $400 billion student loan forgiveness plan
Biden VETOES Republican bill blocking his $400 billion student loan forgiveness plan: President vows to ‘keep helping hardworking people’ — leaving fate of emergency aid program in Supreme Court hands
- Biden vetoes bill, saying he wants to help “hard-working people.”
- House and Senate passed legislation blocking his program that canceled up to $20,000 in borrower debt
- The fate of the program is now in the hands of the Supreme Court
President Joe Biden on Wednesday vetoed a bill that would have overturned his student debt relief plan, leaving the fate of the program in the hands of the Supreme Court.
Both the House and Senate passed legislation that would block the president’s program, which promises to cancel up to $20,000 in debt for millions of borrowers but has been blocked by courts.
“I’m not going to back down in my efforts to help pretend I’m leading working and middle-class families. That’s why I’m going to veto this bill,” Biden said in a video posted to the White House’s social media accounts explaining his decision.
“I will not shy away from helping hard-working people,” he noted.
President Joe Biden vetoed a bill that would have destroyed his student debt relief plan
The video ends with the president, sitting at his desk in the Oval Office, signing the veto.
‘Over the past two years I have worked to make the university more affordable for all students. And my Department of Education has proposed the most generous repayment program ever, which is that you’re going to cut student loan payments in half, and that makes it very clear. I’m never going to apologize for helping working and middle class Americans. As they recover from this pandemic. Never,’ he said.
Biden denounced Republicans in his statement, but some moderate Democratic senators voted with the GOP to block the program: Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana voted in favor of the bill, as did independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
The Supreme Court has yet to determine whether the student loan forgiveness program can take effect. The judges are expected to rule in late June or early July.
A two-thirds majority vote in both the House and Senate would be needed to overturn Biden’s veto, and opponents of the program are unlikely to pass that threshold.
The White House states that Biden’s program will help protect borrowers from default when student loan payments resume later this year after a year-long COVID-pandemic-related pause.
More than 40 million Americans will have to pay for federal student loans starting at the end of August under the terms of a debt ceiling agreement approved by Congress.
Without notice, the Department of Education predicts borrowers will fall behind on their loans at historic rates.
Among the most vulnerable are those who completed their studies during the pandemic. Millions of people have never had to pay off a loan, and their bills will soon be coming amid rising inflation and forecasts of an economic recession.
The fate of the student loan forgiveness plan is now in the hands of the Supreme Court
The student loan forgiveness plan would affect 40 million borrowers and give $10,000 in loan forgiveness to those earning less than $125,000 a year and $20,000 in forgiveness for Pell Grant recipients.
But Republicans disagreed with the program, saying it would add billions to the federal debt while doing nothing to address rising college costs. They also argue that the plan is unfair to those who have already paid off their loans or have not gone to college.
Republicans control the House and easily passed legislation to block the program there.
On the Senate side, GOP senators used the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to roll back executive branch regulations without having to pass the 60-vote Senate threshold required for most legislation.
That meant Democratic senators couldn’t filibuster the Republican move to block the program.