The Job Creators Network Foundation’s Legal Action Fund filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration on Monday for its policy to cancel $10,000 in student debt for millions of borrowers.
The complaint from the conservative advocacy group contends that the policy violated the notice-and-comment processes mandated by the Administrative Procedure Act. Other parties have likewise filed suit over the student debt cancellation effort, which also provides $20,000 in loan forgiveness for students who attended college via Pell Grant.
“The administration’s action does nothing to address the root cause of unaffordable tuition: greedy and bloated colleges that raise tuition far more than inflation year after year while sitting on $700 billion in endowments,” Job Creators Network Foundation President Elaine Parker said in a statement provided to The Daily Wire. “Colleges need to be held accountable for their outrageous tuition prices that fund high executive pay, an army of administrators who provide little-to-no value, and the construction of resort-style amenities.”
The Administrative Procedure Act, initially passed in 1946, ensures that “affected parties have an opportunity to participate in and influence agency decision making at an early stage, when the agency is more likely to give real consideration to alternative ideas,” according to the complaint. Lawyers for plaintiffs Myra Brown and Alexander Taylor, both of whom did not qualify for the full amount of debt cancellation and were unable to communicate their views to the Department of Education, argued that the policy is meant to help Democratic candidates in the upcoming midterm elections.
“By shifting the burden to taxpayers, including those who didn’t go to college or paid their student loans back, colleges escape responsibility for their actions creating the student loan crisis,” Parker continued. “They are given carte blanche to continue their ridiculous pricing. Bailing out this debt only kicks this problem down the road.”
Beyond canceling $10,000 in student loans per borrower, the White House will extend the pause on federal student loan repayment to January 2023 and permit borrowers with undergraduate loans to cap payments at 5% of monthly income. One estimate from the Congressional Budget Office predicts that the overall cost of the loan cancellation could reach $400 billion, with another $20 billion incurred by the extended pause on repayments.
A lawsuit from multiple state attorneys general similarly asserts that the student loan cancellation defies the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in West Virginia v. EPA, which explained that federal agencies cannot assert “highly consequential power beyond what Congress could reasonably be understood to have granted.”
The loan cancellation occurs as the United States national debt surpasses $31 trillion for the first time in history, implying over $93,000 in liabilities per citizen and nearly $247,000 in liabilities per taxpayer. Though lawmakers from both the Republican Party and Democratic Party have presided over runaway budget deficits, the Biden legislative agenda will contribute more than $4.8 trillion in new deficit spending between 2021 and 2031, according to an analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
“This is on top of the trillions of dollars we were projected to borrow before President Biden took office,” the group explained. “Excessive borrowing will lead to continued inflationary pressures, drive the national debt to a new record as soon as 2030, and triple federal interest payments over the next decade — or even sooner if interest rates go up faster or by more than expected.”