Joe Biden is a lawless president. He’d be right at home in a Western movie, hiding out with the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang or muttering about stinkin’ badges.
Biden is trying again, for the third time, to declare that federal student loan debt is forgiven.
“The plan could help rally support among young voters,” The New York Times reported.
Giving away money in exchange for votes is not legal, and neither is forgiving federal student loan debt without authorization from Congress. But in 2020, Biden campaigned for president on a promise that he would do it anyway.
Everyone who has ever taken a high school government class knows that spending bills must start in the House of Representatives, then be passed by the Senate and signed by the president. That’s how the spending of your tax dollars is authorized.
Federal student loan forgiveness is a spending program. It spends money that’s owed to the taxpayers, crediting it to people who took out loans for their education. Up until Joe Biden became president, both Democrats and Republicans agreed that the president does not have the unilateral authority to cancel federal student loan debt.
The U.S. Supreme Court explained that to the president last year, throwing out the plan Biden had hatched in the summer of 2022 in time to buy votes in the midterm elections.
That plan would have forgiven an astounding $400 billion in student debt by distorting the HEROES Act, a law that allowed the government to waive student debt during a national emergency. The HEROES Act was passed to help people who were joining the military after the 9/11 attacks.
Biden tried to make it apply to more than 40 million borrowers by arguing that COVID was still a national emergency. The plan was challenged, and eventually the Supreme Court ruled that Biden had exceeded his authority.
Did that stop the Bumbledance Kid or his pals at the Hole-in-the-Wall hideout? Of course not. What kind of a movie would that be?
“I will stop at nothing,” the president said in a statement after the Supreme Court struck down his plan.
There, that’s a better movie. Terrible government, but a better movie.
In the next scene, Biden expanded a loan repayment program Congress had created in the 1990s. The program authorized income-based loan payments and forgave loans after 20 or 25 years. Biden changed it to 10 years. It affected about 150,000 voters ― sorry, student borrowers ― who had taken out loans of $12,000 or less.
Clearly that wasn’t enough to win the West, because in February, Biden announced during a local campaign stop in Culver City that he was speeding up the loan cancellations by six months. And in early April, the president announced a much bigger program of student loan forgiveness while campaigning in the battleground state of Wisconsin, where an Emerson College poll in mid-March showed him trailing former president Donald Trump by 4 points.
Biden said the new plan will “relieve student debt for more than 30 million Americans.” Ten million voters ― sorry, borrowers ― would enjoy a debt cancellation of $5,000 or more. Four million people would have their debt completely erased.
All courtesy of you, the taxpayer, filing your Form 1040 even as we speak.
You’re being robbed like a stagecoach.
Back at the Hole-in-the-Wall hideout, Biden’s gang explained to reporters that this plan is carefully designed to get around the Supreme Court’s objections to the last plan. But already 18 states have formed a posse and filed a lawsuit to block it.
It wouldn’t be struck down until long after the November election, so those 30 million borrowers who believe they will get free money can continue to believe it all the way to the ballot box.
Biden’s lawlessness doesn’t end with student debt. He is using the Environmental Protection Agency to finalize economically damaging rules, such as emissions standards that are really EV mandates, in open defiance of the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in West Virginia v. EPA. In that case, the court held that agencies can’t decide major questions of national public policy by exceeding the authority that Congress has granted to them.
Another law that’s been shot full of holes by the Biden gang is the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act. It allows the government to grant ineligible individuals “parole into the United States temporarily,” but “only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.” Biden has used this “case-by-case” authorization to allow 30,000 migrants per month to fly into U.S. cities and stay for two years. The rest of the nation’s border security is so destroyed that the House just voted to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Then there’s the lawlessness at the law-enforcing Biden Department of Justice, which last week was even too much for a Biden-appointed judge.
“Are you kidding me?” U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes asked. She was berating Justice Department attorneys who had instructed two lawyers in the DOJ’s Tax Division not to comply with subpoenas from a congressional committee investigating whether Hunter Biden received special treatment. “There’s a person in jail right now because you all brought a criminal lawsuit against him because he did not appear for a House subpoena. And now you guys are flouting those subpoenas?”
Judge Reyes was referring to former Trump adviser Peter Navarro, who did not comply with a subpoena from the Jan. 6 Committee because of concerns that testifying would violate executive privilege and the separation of powers. He was prosecuted, convicted and ordered to prison even though his appeal is still pending.
“I think it’s quite rich you guys pursue criminal investigations and put people in jail for not showing up,” Judge Reyes told the Department of Justice lawyers.
That’s how these movies usually end, with the law catching up to the outlaws. Grab some popcorn, the Mayorkas impeachment trial is about to start.
Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley
