Former New Hampshire Republican Governor Judd Gregg slammed President Joe Biden this week for allegedly trying to “buy votes” through his student loan bailout program.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 last week that Biden’s attempt to use the HEROES Act to unilaterally forgive federally subsidized student loans was illegal.
Gregg responded to the ruling during an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday, calling Biden’s plan “the biggest vote-buying scheme ever received or undertaken by a presidency, is all it was.”
“Forty million people get 20,000 bucks,” he said. “I’ll vote for you to give me 20,000 bucks. And that’s what it is about. That’s what it’s still about. That’s why they’re trying to reform it so they can keep this idea that they’re going to give this huge tax break, this income to all these folks going into the next election.”
“If the Congress wants to give away $20,000 per person to 40 million people and put the rest of the country at risk and increase the debt, and they have the right to do that,” he later added. “But you can’t do it from the executive branch because the executive branch doesn’t have that right under a constitution. And this is just power politics trying to buy votes. It’s that simple. It ought to be called out for what it was.”
WATCH:
"It was the biggest vote buying scheme ever undertaken by a presidency. This was an attempt to spend almost $500B and add it to the debt," says Fmr. Sen. Judd Gregg on President Biden's student debt relief plan. "They clearly violated Article 1 of the Constitution." pic.twitter.com/UI24ggm55C
— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) July 3, 2023
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the 6-3 majority: “The Secretary asserts that the HEROES Act grants him the authority to cancel $430 billion of student loan principal. It does not. We hold today that the Act allows the Secretary to ‘waive or modify’ existing statutory or regulatory provisions applicable to financial assistance programs under the Education Act, not to rewrite that statute from the ground up.”
The decision was made along ideological lines, as Chief Justice Roberts was joined in the majority by Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barret, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas.
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The first case was decided unanimously, with all justices ruling in Department of Education v. Brown that the two petitioners who were denied debt relief under the program did not have standing to sue the Department of Education. The second case, Biden v. Nebraska, upheld the right of the several GOP states involved in the lawsuit to sue the Biden administration, clearing the hurdle necessary to present their argument before the court. Roberts bluntly contended in the majority opinion, “Six States sued, arguing that the HEROES Act does not authorize the loan cancellation plan. We agree.”
Nathan Gay contributed to this report.