Biden waves white flag on student loans. And I’m thrilled


President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ student loan forgiveness schemes were never fair proposals. Even worse, they were illegal.

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I’ve not written about any topic more in the past four years than President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ attempts to “cancel” student loans. 

Can I just say how thrilled I am that I won’t have to do that again? (At least for the next four years … )

Throughout Biden’s presidency, he sought to abuse his executive authority to fulfill misguided campaign promises to take the loan burdens off of borrowers and make them the responsibility of all taxpayers – many of whom didn’t have the privilege or desire to attend college.

It was never a fair proposal. Even worse, it was illegal, no matter how many ways Biden and Harris tried to spin it (and boy, did they try). 

In their attempts to wipe out hundreds of billions of student loan debt, the Biden administration stepped on Congress’ role to create and manage costly programs. 

That’s why the U.S. Supreme Court found Biden’s first major attempt to cancel loans to be unconstitutional in 2023.

While that should have ended the administration’s loan meddling, it didn’t. There was an election coming up, after all, and Biden and Harris needed to attract voters any way they could.

‘Withdrawal’: What a great word from Biden’s Education Department

Despite their best efforts, however, the bribery with loan forgiveness didn’t work. 

And elections have consequences. President-elect Donald Trump’s victory was the death knell for the remaining wide-reaching loan cancellation plans Biden still had in the works.

Late last month, the Biden administration announced it was officially withdrawing several of the proposed rules they had yet to finalize. Those “withdrawal” notices on some of his worst proposals were a welcome sight. 

Among the proposals Biden ditched was his latest sweeping loan forgiveness plan to replace the one shot down by the Supreme Court. The new plan had attracted lawsuits before it even had taken effect. 

Biden also backtracked from a rule that would have made it harder for schools to prevent transgender athletes from playing on the team of their choice. That proposed rule garnered more than 150,000 comments on its own, and the department admitted it faced formidable legal roadblocks

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Trump will still have to deal with two of Biden’s bad policies

Notwithstanding the good news, Biden and his education bureaucrats were still able to force through regulations that Trump is sure to challenge and reverse. 

The first is the backdoor loan forgiveness plan – “SAVE” – that massively expanded an existing income-driven repayment loan and turned it into a venue for defacto cancellation. That was never the point of the law Congress had passed. 

The SAVE program has not surprisingly gotten tied up in the courts and is currently blocked nationwide

Similarly, Biden’s big Title IX rewrite, which took effect last August, quickly faced roadblocks of its own. The new rule, which replaced “sex” with “gender identity,” is on hold in 26 states, greatly limiting its impact. Title IX is the 1972 law that bans sex discrimination in education programs that take federal money. 

It’s possible the courts will put an end to both measures. If they don’t, Trump will have several choices: He could either take to the rulemaking process himself to override Biden’s changes. Or he could ask Congress to take up both student loans and Title IX to clarify what is permissible within the respective laws. 

The latter is by far the better approach and would offer a longer-lasting solution to these important issues that affect millions of Americans. 

In the meantime, I’m glad I won’t have to write about any more of Biden’s illegal loan boondoggles.

Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at USA TODAY. Contact her at [email protected] or on X, formerly Twitter: @Ingrid_Jacques

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