Washington (BLAZETRENDS).- The Supreme Court of the United States ended this Friday with the plan of the Government of Joe Biden to cancel the student debt of millions of university students.
In a decision by the court’s conservative majority, and opposed by the three progressive justices, the court found that the Biden Administration had no right to approve such measures.
The plan had been proposed by the Democratic president to alleviate some of the economic hardship caused by the covid-19 pandemic, but was challenged by attorneys general from several Republican-governed states.
Implications of Forgiving Debt
In a decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the justices sided with the state of Missouri, which argued that the debt cancellation measure would hurt the revenue of a state agency that manages student loans.
In this sense, Roberts explained that US law allows the Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, “to make modest adjustments and additions to existing regulations (…), not to transform them.”
These modifications, according to Roberts, created “a fundamentally different new plan for debt forgiveness.”
opposition of the progressives
In a dissenting opinion written by Justice Elena Kagan and seconded by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the three progressive justices argue that “in all respects, the court today exceeds its proper and limited role in the Government of our nation. ”.
At the end of August of the year, Biden announced that he was going to forgive part of the debt that millions of university students contracted with the federal Administration in order to pay for their studies.
His opponents had argued that the plan would cost the public purse $400 billion over the next 30 years.
Biden vows to keep fighting
After learning of the ruling, Biden promised in a statement that “the battle is not over” and that he will announce new measures to end the debt.
“I will stop at nothing when it comes to providing forms of relief for working-middle-class families,” said the Democratic leader, who called Republicans “hypocrites” for wanting to forgive the debt of large companies but not students.
Instead, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, hailed the ruling because, he said, most Americans “will already be forced” to pay minority student debt.
“We are angry and disappointed,” the Student Debt Crisis Center, which groups 2 million students and called on Biden to forgive the debt, “using all possible alternatives,” declared on social networks.
