Seven more states filed another lawsuit on Tuesday againt the Biden administration over its continued attempts to circumvent the Supreme Court’s ruling against sweeping federal student loan debt handouts, Fox Business reported.
So far, 18 states have sued Biden for passing billions of dollars in student loan debt on to taxpayers.
The latest lawsuit, led by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, claims that Biden’s Saving on a Valuable Education Plan, also referred to as SAVE, is illegal.
According to the administration, SAVE is a new income-driven repayment plan that uses borrowers’ income to calculate a monthly payment. The program has “unique benefits that will lower payments for many borrowers.”
The White House has used the plan to roll out so-called debt cancellation for roughly 1 million Americans with at least $45.6 billion of debt.
The Supreme Court previously rejected the Biden administration’s plan to enact unilateral debt cancellations. The federal government has since announced many smaller, similar programs despite the court's decision.
The Biden administration reported that nearly 8 million borrowers are enrolled in the president’s SAVE plan, and 4.5 million now “have a monthly payment of $0.”
AG Bailey told Fox Business, “With the stroke of his pen, Joe Biden is attempting to saddle working Missourians with a half-trillion dollars in debt. The United States Constitution makes clear that the president lacks the authority to unilaterally ‘cancel’ student loan debt for millions of Americans without express permission from Congress.”
“The president does not get to thwart the Constitution when it suits his political agenda,” he continued. “I’m filing suit to halt his embarrassing attempt to buy the 2024 election in direct violation of the law. The Constitution will continue to mean something as long as I’m attorney general.”
“We beat his unlawful student loan plan in court last summer, so he quickly rolled out Plan B. Now that we’re challenging that, he’s panicked and is rolling out a Plan C. We will continue to watch him closely and take action whenever he’s overstepped his authority,” Bailey told Fox Business.
Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Dakota, Ohio, and Oklahoma joined Missouri in the newest lawsuit.
The complaint argued that the SAVE plan demonstrates “a long but troubling pattern of the President relying on innocuous language from decades-old statutes to impose drastic, costly policy changes on the American people without their consent.”
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin told the news outlet, “President Biden has already lost on this question once, and he is refusing to follow the law. The Supreme Court could not have been clearer: President Biden cannot unilaterally cancel student debt and force taxpayers to bear the multibillion-dollar cost.”
Late last month, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach and 10 other states filed a similar lawsuit against the Biden administration, challenging its efforts to wipe out federal student loan debt, Blaze News previously reported.
“Not since the Civil War has a president told the Supreme Court, ‘Yeah you blocked me, but I’m gonna do it anyway,’” Kobach told Fox News Digital. “Biden is trying to twist federal law once again, and his new plan is just as illegal as the old plan.”
The Education Department responded to the initial lawsuit, telling the news outlet, “The Department does not comment on pending litigation. However, Congress gave the U.S. Department of Education the authority to define the terms of income-driven repayment plans in 1993, and the SAVE plan is the fourth time the Department has used that authority.”
“The Biden-Harris Administration won’t stop fighting to provide support and relief to borrowers across the country – no matter how many times Republican elected officials try to stop us,” the department added.
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