The Supreme Court tomorrow will hear arguments about President Biden’s plan to eliminate up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt for most borrowers, at an estimated cost of $400 billion, the New York Times reported. Biden’s plan, announced in August, has been blocked by legal challenges, preventing the government from canceling any debt for the 26 million borrowers who have applied for relief. The White House insists its approach — which bypassed Congress and relies on a 2003 law, the HEROES Act, that allows the education secretary to grant relief in times of national emergency — is legally sound. The actions that Biden has directed Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to take “fall comfortably within the plain text of the act,” the administration argued in a legal filing to the court. Challengers, including six Republican-led states, call it an abuse of executive authority that seeks “breathtaking and transformative power” by relying on “a tenuous and pretextual connection to a national emergency,” according to their legal brief. Caught in limbo are millions of borrowers who have swung between hope and despair as Biden’s relief plan was started and then halted. Biden’s plan would cancel $20,000 in debt for those, like her, who received Pell grants, which aid students from low-income families. Biden has cast his debt relief plan as an essential step in restarting a student-loan collection system that has been frozen for nearly three years. The hiatus began as a two-month pause initiated by President Donald J. Trump’s administration when the pandemic was ravaging the economy. Congress and Mr. Trump extended the hiatus three times, and Mr. Biden six more times, most recently in November. The president announced then that borrowers’ bills would resume 60 days after the court challenges to his relief plan were resolved or Sept. 1, whichever came sooner.
