Congressional lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are already raising concerns with President Biden over his new student loan forgiveness proposal.
“The Senate should block Biden’s socialist student debt relief program,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., told Fox News Digital. “Hardworking Tennesseans should not be paying for wealthy coastal elites to get PhDs in gender studies. The Supreme Court already struck down Biden’s previous student loan scam as unconstitutional, but once again, he is attempting to defy the rule of law.”
Republican critics of the plan have accused him of trying to buy votes at a time when progressive youth are becoming disenchanted with Biden over his stance on Israel’s war in Gaza.
House GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., told Fox News Digital, “Joe Biden is forcing the American people to foot the bill for his illegal student loan bailout in a desperate attempt to save his failing campaign.”
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Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, similarly wrote on X that it was “just the latest example of election gimmicks where they are blatantly trying to buy votes.”
Biden’s new plan would cancel up to $20,000 in interest accrued on borrower’s student loans, regardless of income level.
It would also totally forgive interest for people in an income-driven repayment plan making less than $120,000. The threshold is doubled for married couples.
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The proposal would forgive interest balances for up to 25 million borrowers, the White House said on Monday morning.
Last spring saw a bipartisan push in Congress to block Biden’s first attempt at broad student loan forgiveness.
Two Democrats joined House Republicans in voting to stop the measure from going into effect in late May. Three Senate Democrats voted with Republicans to block Biden’s plan the next month, but the president ultimately vetoed it. That first student loan proposal was eventually struck down by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority in a 6-3 vote in July.
And on the Capitol Hill side, it does not appear as if Biden managed to sway left-wing critics of his initial plan to come on board.
A spokesperson for Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., who voted to block the student loan plan last June, told Fox News Digital that the Democrat senator “has made it clear to President Biden that he is opposed to blanket loan cancelation that forces taxpayers to pick up the tab while failing to fix the root causes of the problem.”
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., pointed Fox News Digital to an earlier statement when Manchin celebrated overturning the initial proposal and attacked it as “reckless.”
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Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, who along with Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Wash., voted with the GOP to block the initial proposal, told Fox News Digital on Monday, “I opposed President Biden’s first student debt forgiveness plan, as did the US Supreme Court when it ruled the president’s approach to be unconstitutional. These are new proposals, and I will take the time necessary to review them before commenting on them.”
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., accused Biden of trying to circumvent the Supreme Court, which ruled against Biden’s initial student loan plan last year.
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“American taxpayers, including those who didn’t go to college, should not be forced to foot the bill for Joe Biden’s student loan bailout. His latest scheme is not only a slap in the face to the Supreme Court…it’s a slap in the face to the millions of Americans who’ve worked hard to avoid student debt,” Emmer told Fox News Digital.
House Education and Workforce Committee Chair Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., said in a statement, “The problem is these so-called solutions to the student loan system outlined in the President’s plans forces taxpayers — many of whom never stepped foot on a college campus — to pay for loans others willingly took out and benefited from….Students, families, and taxpayers deserve real solutions to lower the cost of college and fix the federal student loan program.”
In response to a request for comment by Fox News Digital, a White House spokesperson pointed to comments made to reporters by a senior administration official clarifying that this plan differs from the one shot down by the high court.
“You know, we have studied the Supreme Court’s decision carefully. We intend to pursue these regulations in a way that is entirely consistent with that decision. The plans differ from the administration’s prior pandemic relief proposal in a number of significant ways, and the Department’s proceeding under different legal authority, which is longstanding. And the plans involve different considerations by providing targeted relief to borrowers with particular circumstances,” the official said.
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