- Missouri announced it has filed a lawsuit with six other states
- Kansas led 11 states in a lawsuit against Biden’s recent IDR plan
- The Biden administration has forgiven $146 billion in student loans to date
Eighteen Republican-led states are trying to block President Biden’s attempt to cancel billions in student debt.
On Tuesday, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced he is leading a coalition of seven states in a lawsuit against the Biden administration over its SAVE plan.
The lawsuit comes after 11 other states led by Kansas recently filed another lawsuit against the Biden administration over the program that began canceling student debt earlier this year.
‘With the stroke of a pen, Joe Biden is trying to saddle the working people of Missouri half a trillion dollars in college debt,” Missouri’s attorney general said in a statement.
“The Constitution of the United States makes clear that the President does not have the authority to unilaterally ‘cancel’ the debts of millions of Americans without express authorization from Congress,” he added.
The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimated that the SAVE plan could cost as much as $474.9 billion over the years.
Two lawsuits have been filed by Republican attorneys general against the Biden administration’s income-driven repayment program, known as the SAVE plan.
Missouri is joined in the lawsuit by the Republican attorneys general of Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Dakota, Ohio and Oklahoma.
The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri states that the latest attempt to “circumvent the Constitution is just the latest example in a long but disturbing pattern of the president relying on innocuous language from decades-old statues for drastic, costly policy changes.”
Last month, Kansas was joined by Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Texas and Utah in another lawsuit filed in Kansas.
President Biden at an event to tackle student loan debt in Madison, Wisconsin on Monday
Protesters gathered outside the Supreme Court when the court blocked President Biden’s previous student loan relief plan last June
Republican attorneys general are taking issue with the SAVE program, which was announced last summer after the Supreme Court blocked Biden’s $400 billion plan to wipe out the debt last June.
Like other income-driven repayment plans, the SAVE plan calculates monthly payments based on income and family size, but reduces payments for most borrowers.
The program reduces payments from 10 percent of discretionary income to five percent and many borrowers would pay $0 per month.
Those who had an original balance of $12,000 or less would have their loans forgiven after ten years. All borrowers would receive forgiveness after 20 to 25 years of repayment.
In February, the government began forgiving debt for the first time under the plan, including $1.2 billion for 153,000 borrowers.
The government has said nearly 8 million borrowers have enrolled in the plan, and more than 4.5 million borrowers have payments of $0, while another million borrowers have monthly payments of less than $100.
The Ministry of Education said it would continue to identify borrowers eligible to have their debts forgiven on an ongoing basis.
As states challenge the SAVE program, the Biden administration on Monday announced a new set of measures that, combined with the SAVE program, it could help wipe out the student debt of 30 million Americans.
These actions include efforts to forgive interest for borrowers who owe more than their original balance, for those who would qualify for other programs but have not yet enrolled, for borrowers who have been in repayment for 20 or 25 years, and for those in financial difficulties. .
The Biden administration said it is confident in its new effort, which relies on the Higher Education Act, not the HEROES Act, which was used in the first effort to cancel student loan debt.