President Joe Biden has boasted about defying the Supreme Court ruling that blocked his debt forgiveness scheme while falsely claiming no cost to taxpayers.
During a speech in Las Vegas on Sunday, President Joe Biden boasted that he has continued canceling student debt thanks to workarounds in defiance of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that blocked his debt relief plan—while claiming that the forgiveness won’t burden taxpayers.
“I promised we’d help eliminate accumulated student debt that millions of Americans carried during the economic pandemic and beyond,” President Biden said in the speech, recalling one of his key campaign promises.
“The Supreme Court of the United States blocked me, but they didn’t stop me,” he continued, saying he “found another way” to continue canceling student debt, while falsely claiming that the various forgiveness schemes were “not costing people” anything.
In a 6-3 decision in the summer of 2023, the Supreme Court blocked President Biden’s plan to cancel $430 billion in student loan debt for some 43 million Americans, protecting taxpayers from having to fund the forgiveness scheme but delivering a blow to one of the president’s campaign promises.
At the time, President Biden denounced the decision, saying in a June 30, 2023, speech at the White House that the Supreme Court decision “closed one path” but that his administration would “pursue another,” including by way of a student debt forbearance scheme under the Higher Education Act.
Since then, the Biden administration has continued to cancel debt for specific groups of federal student loan borrowers by tweaking and expanding rules under existing relief programs.
For example, in his Las Vegas speech, President Biden said he “fixed” one of the existing programs to allow public servants to get student debt relief, adding that members of this group would be getting notices in the mail soon.
“This time, they’re not going to have any doubt about who sent it to you. It’s going to have my name on it—Biden,” he declared.
By Tom Ozimek
