Biden’s Plan for Student Loan ‘Forgiveness’ Is Forbidden by the Constitution

The most important point to make about President Biden’s student loan forgiveness is that it’s a move the Constitution prohibits. It puts American taxpayers on the hook for paying the student loans of their fellow citizens without going through the process the Constitution requires. The way Mr. Biden promised the giveaway without legal justification stands in stark contrast to how his administration justified launching missiles against foes in Syria just yesterday. The USCENTCOM communications director, Joe Buccino, said, “The president gave the direction for these strikes pursuant to his Article II authority… .”Yet the White House offered no such basis for his student loan gimmick, because the Constitution’s relevant portion — Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 — prohibits him from spending a dime. That passage states, “No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law.”As recently as July, Speaker Pelosi explained this limitation on the chief executive, speaking as part of a co-equal branch of government and speaker of, in the House of Representatives, the house in which any federal spending must originate.“People think that the president of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness,” she said of Mr. Biden’s proposal. “He does not. He can postpone. He can delay. But he does not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress,” which, as it happens, is controlled by the president’s party.So, why is Mr. Biden not going the constitutional route down Pennsylvania Avenue and instead rolling over the rule of law and violating his oath of office? What changed since the White House press secretary, Jennifer Psaki, put the focus on Congress to fund the proposal not quite a month into the administration?“The president,” Ms. Psaki said, “has and continues to support canceling $10,000 of federal student loan debt per person, as a response to the Covid crisis. He’s calling on Congress to draft the proposal. And if it is — if it is — passed and sent to his desk, he will look forward to signing it.”Why did the president seek to go through the legislature last year but not now? Has he since discovered that, like Dorothy with her ruby slippers, he had the power all along? No. Mr. Biden still knows that he does not possess the power of the purse, and perhaps due to his long history in the Senate, he respected the separation of powers.Yet with the midterm elections approaching — and knowing the House will not hold him accountable using the blunt tool of impeachment — Mr. Biden is forging ahead. Plus, before the Supreme Court has a chance to rule against the gambit, people who think he’s gifting them debt relief will have rewarded Democrats at the ballot box.Even if the court stops the Money Train, it will be a small matter to pillory the justices and push for packing the court, which is on the far-left’s wish list, anyway. Lost in the politicking and undermining of the independent judiciary will be that Mr. Biden’s action has ensured that he or any future president has an easier time acting outside the Constitution.It’s not a given that anyone would have legal standing to challenge this executive overreach, a point marked in May by Charles Lane in the Washington Post. “Jack V. Hoover argues in the Virginia Law Review,” Mr. Lane wrote, “mass debt cancellation does not injure the people left out, except in the diffuse sense of having to pay taxes; no plaintiff would have the concrete, ‘particularized injury’ required to sue.”Should that dodge prevail, the courts might not even take up the case, and the Constitution will have been reduced to little more than a suggestion. Legislation will have been proven optional and Congress subverted, setting a precedent for future actions that may not be as benevolent as “forgiveness.” When Republicans held the White House, Mrs. Pelosi often said, “Nobody is above the law, not even the president.” That was true then and it’s hard to see why it wouldn’t be just as true now, despite the uncomfortable fact that the ruby slipper is on Mr. Biden’s foot.

Biden’s Plan for Student Loan ‘Forgiveness’ Is Forbidden by the Constitution

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