Appeals court temporarily halts Biden’s student debt cancellation
President Joe Biden said that nearly 22 million Americans have already signed up for his student debt forgiveness program, promoting enrollment in the initiative on Friday and assailing Republicans who have criticized the relief.
But hours after he spoke, a federal appeals court in St. Louis temporarily blocked the programme from moving forward until it rules on an injunction request from six Republican-led states challenging its legality.
The action puts any debt cancellation on hold until the court can rule on the states’ request for an injunction preventing the government from discharging debts.
The court set a Monday deadline for the government to submit its response to the states’ filing and a Tuesday deadline for the states to respond.
Lawyers for the states asked the court to revive their lawsuit over the plan after it was dismissed on Thursday by a federal judge who determined that the states wouldn’t suffer any direct harm if the plan went into effect.
The White House did not immediately comment on Friday night on the appeals court decision.
Biden’s remarks, at the University of Delaware on Friday, represented his most aggressive promotion yet for the debt-relief plan, less than three weeks before midterm elections that will decide control of Congress.
“Their outrage is wrong and it’s hypocritical,” Biden said at Delaware State University, singling out Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas by name.
“Who in the hell do they think they are?” he said, to applause from an audience largely made up of students.
Republican lawsuits threaten to throw millions of applicants into limbo, though the president applauded Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s decision on Thursday to deny one group of plaintiffs’ request to block the program before it takes effect.
For weeks after announcing the student-debt relief plan in August, Biden all but avoided talking about it as his administration worked out kinks in the application process.
While they welcomed promotional efforts that kicked off this week, some Democrats have expressed worry that Biden waited too long to make an impact in the election.
Eligible borrowers can apply to have as much as US$20,000 in debt forgiven.
“I certainly think there was an argument that it could have been done earlier,” said Chris Scott, chief political officer at Democracy for America, a progressive PAC, pointing out that his group was among those pushing the White House to act sooner.
He said development of the application portal may have led Biden to hold off from pushing the programme on the trail. The site officially launched on Monday.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the loan-relief programme will cost the government at least US$400 billion, fueling Republican criticism that it represents reckless spending.
Even some prominent Democrats have distanced themselves over its expanse.
Representative Tim Ryan, a Democrat in a tight Ohio Senate race, said in a statement that loan forgiveness “goes too far” by extending aid to six-figure earners.
The initiative delivers on a Biden campaign promise and was hailed by allies as an election-year draw for young and progressive voters, who are crucial to helping Democrats retain the House and Senate.
Allies cheered the final framework, but in the weeks before the application portal opened, Biden rarely mentioned the programme even as he regularly rattled off other policy achievements.
Building Back Together, an outside group that promotes administration policies, announced on Thursday a six-figure ad campaign to encourage people to apply. The blitz on digital platforms will target young Americans in Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, three states with crucial Senate races.
“This is an issue that we shouldn’t be running from, we should be leaning into, and especially him,” Scott said of Biden.