did so this week, putting Biden’s student loan vote-buying scheme into merited limbo. The even better news is that by upholding the Constitution’s separation of powers, the judges are also helping save taxpayers nearly half a trillion dollars.
Loan forgiveness makes suckers of responsible former students who paid back their federally guaranteed loans. It also, according to estimates accepted by one of the courts, adds at least $475 billion over 10 years to the federal debt. Those who already paid full tuition and people who never attended college would foot that bill.
As the judges in the two cases noted, though, only Congress, not the executive branch, has constitutional authority to appropriate taxpayer dollars. Both judges concluded that Congress did not give the president or his appointees the power to spend money from the Treasury to repay loans on this massive scale. Both judges allowed the Education Department to alter the schedule of borrowers’ repayments but not to write off the loans entirely.
Likewise, Judge Daniel Crabtree of the District of Kansas wrote that Biden was attempting “an enormous and transformative expansion in statutory authority without clear congressional authorization.”