3 Left-Leaning Senators Vote to Block Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Plan

The Senate has voted mostly along partisan lines to pass a resolution aimed at blocking President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. 

The final vote was 52-46, with Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.V.; Jon Tester, D-Mont.; and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., voting with Republicans. Two senators did not vote.

Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., and Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., introduced the resolution in the House and the Senate on March 27. The House passed the resolution in a 218-203 vote on May 24.

“I am pleased that my Republican colleagues in the Senate supported Sen. Cassidy and my efforts to overturn President Biden’s unlawful and unfair student loan transfer scheme,” Good said in a written statement on Thursday. “I am proud to have led the House fight against President Biden’s reckless, unilateral, and unconstitutional action that would penalize those who worked hard to pay off their loans or who never took them out in the first place.”

“The president should reverse course, and do the right thing by signing this legislation as it heads to his desk,” Good also said.

Last August, Biden announced plans to forgive $10,000 of debt for individual student loan borrowers who make less than $125,000 per year ($250,000 for households) and $20,000 for borrowers who received a Pell Grant. 

“Today I voted to repeal the Biden administration’s student loan cancellation proposal because we simply cannot afford to add another $400 billion to the national debt,” Manchin said in a Wednesday statement. “There are already more than 50 existing student loan repayment and forgiveness programs aimed at attracting individuals to vital service jobs, such as teachers, health care workers, and public servants.”

“This Biden proposal undermines these programs and forces hard-working taxpayers who already paid off their loans or did not go to college to shoulder the cost,” Manchin said. “Instead, we should be focusing on bipartisan student debt reforms that reduce the cost of higher education and help all Americans.”

The resolution now heads to the president’s desk.

However, the Biden administration has voiced its opposition to Republicans’ efforts and said that Biden will veto the legislation.

“The administration strongly opposes passage of H.J. Res. 45, a joint resolution to disapprove the Department of Education’s Waivers and Modifications of Federal Student Loans,” the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a Statement of Administration Policy on May 22. “This resolution is an unprecedented attempt to undercut our historic economic recovery and would deprive more than 40 million hard-working Americans of much-needed student debt relief.”

“If enacted, H.J. Res. 45 would weaken America’s middle class. Nearly 90 percent of the relief provided by the Department of Education would go to Americans earning less than $75,000 per year, and no relief would go to any individual or household in the top 5 percent of incomes,” the statement also said. “Americans should be able to have a little more breathing room as they recover from the economic strains associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The Supreme Court is expected to rule in the near future on two cases pertaining to Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. The nation’s highest court heard oral arguments in February.

“The administration has relied on an emergency-powers law called the HEROES Act, which was passed in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,” GianCarlo Canaparo and Jack Fitzhenry of The Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies wrote in a previous commentary for The Daily Signal. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)

“President Joe Biden claims that he can use that law to cancel student loan debt for more than 95% of all borrowers,” Canaparo and Fitzhenry wrote.

The Daily Signal’s Virginia Allen contributed to this report.

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