Bill to Block Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Back on the Table

U.S. Rep.-elect Bob Good (R-Va.) delivers remarks in the House Chamber during the third day of elections for Speaker of the House at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington on Jan. 5, 2023. Win McNamee/Getty Images

Republican efforts to block the Biden administration’s relentless drive for student loan forgiveness are back on Congress’s table.

On Wednesday, Virginia Republican Congressman Bob Good reintroduced his bill entitled the Federal Student Loan Integrity Act.

Under it, the U.S. Department of Education would be barred from using legislation known as the HEROES Act to extend the moratorium on the repayment of student loans originally set under the coronavirus emergency declaration.

“Student loan cancellation doesn’t make the debt go away—rather, it shifts the costs from student loan borrowers to American taxpayers,” said Good in a statement announcing the reintroduction of an anti-student loan forgiveness legislation.

According to Good, President Joe Biden’s current cancellation plan would cost taxpayers roughly $500 billion. The plan forgives up to $20,000 in student loan debt to taxpayers earning less than $125,000.

The controversy was a divisive subject during midterm elections and has evolved into a constitutional issue with Biden’s partial student loan forgiveness plan now under review in the Supreme Court, where two separate cases challenge its constitutionality and the Biden’s administration authority to even implement such a plan.

The Supreme Court is expected to hear oral arguments on the issue on Feb. 28, with a projected decision by June.

President Joe Biden announces student loan relief in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington on Aug. 24, 2022. Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images

Among the myriad of arguments made in the cases is one that suggests Biden’s student loan debt forgiveness is discriminatory because it includes only federally-backed student loans and not private student loans.

That complaint surfaced after a quiet modification in September by the Biden administration that nixed its one heralded loophole that allowed private student loan holders to become eligible for loan forgiveness by consolidating their student loans into one loan under the federally-run Direct Loan program.

Student Loan Justice Revamped

For obvious reasons, the issue has given birth to a movement of student loan debtors seeking freedom from their college debts. It has revamped the nearly two-decade-old group Student Loan Justice, which runs daily action alerts on issues along with social media pages, blogs, instructions to start a state chapter, and a website dedicated to the cause. It spearheaded a change.org petition calling for Biden to use his executive orders to cancel federal student loans.

The group even has a live stream show on YouTube hosted by its founder Alan Collinge who authored the book “The Student Loan Scam.”

On Jan. 17, the day before Good reintroduced his anti-loan forgiveness legislation, Collinge opened his Student Loan Justice Livestream show by playing several bars of a solemn Johnny Cash song on the piano.

“There’s no good reason for anyone with student loans to be suffering in silence,” Collinge tells his audience. “I’m here to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, you’re not the only ones ... 85 percent of all student loan borrowers were never going to pay their students loans even before the pandemic,” he says.

Collinge goes on to say that “this is not a bad borrower problem, this is a bad, catastrophically failed unconstitutional and predatory lending scam.”

In an attempt to draw conservative support, the group claims on its petition that more than half of all student loan borrowers identify as being “independent or republican.” It even goes on to say that “Red” states are being hurt significantly worse than Blue states. “This is not a partisan issue,” it states.

So far, however, the issue remains just that, with Republicans like Good promising to use the GOP’s newly-established House control to defeat Biden’s student loan cancellation agenda.

Student loan debtors hold a rally in front of the White House to celebrate President Joe Biden's intent to cancel student debt, which was later blocked by the Supreme Court on Aug. 24, 2022. Paul Morigi/Getty Images for We the 45m

The legal challenges have also wholly been brought by Republican-led states—Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Carolina and has the backing of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, a nonprofit group that tracks federal government spending.

The Democratic Party’s push to drive student loan relief also carries potentially broader political party implications as well, especially in the Democrats’ growing push for globalism and immigration.

According to a recent report by the Institute of International Education, U.S. colleges and universities saw an increase in admission applicants from foreign countries for the 2022-2023 school year.

In a Jan. 12 article on its website, Nova Credit, which bills itself as a premier cross-border credit bureau for immigrants, posted detailed instructions on how international students can garner U.S. student loans—with emphasis on federally backed ones.

Student Debt Relief for Government Workers

As Biden’s one-time student loan debt forgiveness initiative remains in constitutional limbo, his administration wasted no time reauthorizing a program that cancels all student debt for government workers.

Called the Limited Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Waiver, it erases all student loan debt after 10 years of public service. While PSLF has been around for years, a waiver was added to it in 2021 that granted the workers credits for past student loan payments.

The program expired on Oct. 31, but the Biden administration reauthorized it the following day on Nov. 1. According to a Department of Education press release, about $2.82 billion worth of student loan debt forgiveness is available under the PSLF.