He could forgive it all as an “Official Act”
This is like the 5th attempt at this. Of all the things to accuse him of not trying to accomplish, student loan forgiveness is not one of them
Well he would not be liable to criminal prosecution, but that says nothing of whether the loans have to be forgiven upon his declaration.
The immunity just stops him from facing personal legal consequences and only after SCOTUS confirms any crimes were committed during an official act. How do they test for that? They haven’t said and will make up reasons to help/hurt whoever they want on a case by case basis.
Are there laws Biden could break that would force loan forgiveness, and would the current supreme court side with Biden? Seems like no in both cases aside from more Seal Team Six arguments resulting in a new set of SCOTUS judges ruling on such orders. Biden ain’t the guy to make that happen.
92% of student loan debt is publicly owned through the Department of Education. This department can - and periodically does - write off loans as bad debt for a variety of reasons. And the policies used to determine when the department writes of the loan are set by the department itself.
However, the funding for new loans is derived in large part from the repayment of old debt. So the DoEd could scratch it’s trillion dollar balance off, but would then have this massive liability to the US Treasury with no way to pay it back (not unlike a bunch of the failed private banks during the 2008 crash). And, of course, no new loans would be forthcoming, forcing borrowers into the private lending market (where rates get into the double digits).
There are legalistic end runs Congress or the Treasury could do to avert this. But Dems blocked debt relief in 2009 and then again in 2017. The GOP is openly hostile to any kind of student debt relief, so they’re no help. And the Treasury is just independent enough to tell DoEd to piss up a rope, while backchanneling aid to Silicon Valley Bank and other failed private lenders.
So, it’s complicated. But also, it’s only not possible because we choose to exclusively bail out the Tech/Auto/Finance/Real Estate sectors and leave Education high and dry.
