SCOTUS kills Biden's student loan/debt relief plan...

This is the experience I have had with my undergrads as well. Admittedly, biology students aren’t necessarily representative of all citizens, but I think many academic fields have moved to encouraging some post-undergrad education.

 

The libbies are head over heals in love with all answers coming from the govt.
They want to hold all the cards and cannot wait to roll out more and more red tape.
They just love govt.

 

The bottom line is student debt relief is not the President's business. He's way out of his lane here. Our nation has a right to make foolish decisions like this one, but those should at least go through the proper Constitutional channels, which in this case would be Congress. If this is indeed the will of the people, then it should be able to pass in Congress.

 

Yep. That seems legit. I took 5 1/2 years to graduate because I only took about 10 credits per semester, as well as summer classes. I paid for the whole thing for the first three years with a part-time job making about 5 to 6 dollars an hour. I certainly don’t envy the kids today trying to go to college.

 

Honestly, no idea what you’re trying to say here, so I’ll treat the question as if there’s not some sort of trap involved.

Sometimes it’s important to be very clear and unambiguous in dealings with other countries in order to not inadvertently provoke war, but other times it’s equally important to be deliberately ambiguous in order to keep them guessing and acting cautious for the same reason. An example of the first would be most of our moves during the Cuban Missile Crisis. An example of the second is our policy toward defending Taiwan from Chinese (which probably should have been our policy with respect to Ukraine). I hope that answers your question, but truly no idea where this is going.

 

I don't disagree.

 

Sure. I’ll clarify. Don’t piss in our cheerios and call it milk.

We’re all college educated, reasonably well read people. We know damn well what the Republicans on the Supreme Court are doing and it has nothing to do with “interpreting the law.” They are political agents there to deliver political results. We know it. You know it. Anyone not living under a rock knows it. So save the performative appeals to authority.

 

You're criticizing the wisdom of the policy. Biden ran on that policy, and the people elected him. It's not the Supreme Court's role to block policies because they're unwise. If the people agree that Biden's policy is unwise, they can punish him at the ballot box.

 

It already did when Congress handed the Executive the power to do exactly what Biden did here.

 

I posted the statute in this thread. It's easy to read and understand. What you just read were some Republican politicians using the power they have to veto Democratic policies.

Even more fundamentally, Missouri had no standing to sue. MOHELA refused to sue. Missouri tried to claim injury using MOHELA's alleged lost revenues. But the data shows that Biden's loan forgiveness would INCREASE revenue for MOHELA. Another case where Republican SCOTUS brazenly lied to get to its preferred outcome.
Canceling student loans will actually boost servicer's revenues—analysis

 

One of the checks and balances on the legislative branch is the Supreme Court. So, the Supreme Court took the law passed by Congress and swatted it like Dikembe Mutombo.

 

That didn't happen either. Republican SCOTUS didn't strike down the law, nor could it. Nobody disputed the constitutionality of the law.

 

I was actually challenging the wisdom of the interpreter in chief (and his handlers), and by your analysis, the wisdom of the majority of US voters. What can I get at the expense of others has become a major driver in our elections, unfortunately. The old and famous and deeply meaningful “Ask not what your country can do for you” is dead, along with the Boy Scout motto “be prepared”. I know, I know, both are outdated drivel now. Now that you mention it, though, a majority of important and learned people approved by our elected representatives have decided that it is unconstitutional in addition to my assertion that it is unwise.

 

Whether I agree or not, this is a very well-written post. Bravo.

 

Republican politicians vetoed a Democrat's policy simply because they had the power to do so. I posted the statute in this thread. Not a single person has offered a persuasive argument as to why the statute didn't authorize the Biden administration to waive borrowers' obligation to pay their debts.

"Because the Supreme Court said so" isn't a real response. The Supreme Court also said Black people were property, segregation was legal, and there were no co situational issues with putting Japanese-Americans in concentration camps. And that's the tip of the iceberg of that institution being full of crap.

 

Well, if the President waives the obligation for people repay $10,000 of their debt, the next President can't unring that bell. He could rescind the policy moving forward. But the debt was already wiped off the books.

 

I gotta tip my hat to Amy Coney Barrett. In her concurrence, her analogy offers the best explanation for why what Republican SCOTUS is doing is unprincipled. I'll quote directly:
"Consider a parent who hires a babysitter to watch her young children over the weekend. As she walks out the door, the parent hands the babysitter her credit card and says: 'Make sure the kids have fun.' Emboldened, the babysitter takes the kids on a road trip to an amusement park, where they spend two days on rollercoasters and one night in a hotel. Was the babysitter’s trip consistent with the parent’s instruction? Maybe in a literal sense, because the instruction was open-ended. But was the trip consistent with a reasonable understanding of the parent’s instruction? Highly doubtful. In the normal course, permission to spend money on fun authorizes a babysitter to take children to the local ice cream parlor or movie theater, not on a multiday excursion to an out-of-town amusement park. If a parent were willing to greenlight a trip that big, we would expect much more clarity than a general instruction to 'make sure the kids have fun.'"

Think about what she's saying for a second. This example admits that the plain text of the instruction authorizes the conduct. But the conduct wasn't what the parents expected. In other words, Congress passed a statute authorizing the Biden administration to do exactly what it did, but the Republicans on SCOTUS think this sort of debt forgiveness wasn't within the "spirit" of the statute.

But that's not the judiciary's job. The judiciary's job is to determine whether Congress authorized the Executive to take the action it did. If so, that's it. Case over. If Congress believes the President is overstepping, Congress can amend the law. If the people believe the President is overstepping, the people can replace Congress and the President. (Similar to how the parents can fire the babysitter if they believe her actions went too far.) Basically, we have elections and legislation as two solutions where Congress authorizes the President to act, Congress didn't think through the consequences fully, and the President takes advantage.

Instead, we have an unelected group of politicians in robes who have decided the text of the statute be damned, Congress didn't mean what it said, so they need to intervene and veto the Executive's act. Thing is, Joe Biden ran on debt forgiveness. People elected him knowing that he planned to do it. So what we really have are a group of unelected Republican bureaucrats admitting that Congress technically authorized what Biden did---what the American people elected him to do---and reversing it because they feel that Congress didn't actually mean what it said when it handed the Executive Branch that authority. It's unprincipled and not what "judges" are supposed to do.

 

Yes, we're all college educated and reasonably well read people. We all hate those posters who are living under that proverbial rock you speak of, thinking that only the Republicans on the Supreme Court interpret the law with a bias.

 

It's not the will of the people. It's almost as ridiculous as Biden embracing plan to block the sun or children having sex changes. These crazy ideas are coming fast and often.