Last week, President Joe Biden, without authorization from Congress, announced he plans to transfer roughly $500 billion worth of student loan debt from the borrowers who took out the loans to hardworking taxpayers across the country. Other presidents, Republicans and Democrats, have attempted to overstep their authority, and we have never been shy about criticizing them. But in our time in the Senate, we have never seen a president attempt to spend up to a trillion dollars with the stroke of a pen.
To be clear, Biden does not have the authority to cancel billions in student loan debts without congressional authorization. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) agreed that the authority is not there when she explained that “people think that the president of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not. He can postpone. He can delay but he does not have that power. That would have to be an act of Congress.” The Department of Education issued a memo in January 2021 agreeing with the speaker that the president does not have the authority to cancel student loan debt.
