Seven states, led by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, filed suit Tuesday against the Biden Administration’s latest scheme to forgive student loans.
The lawsuit targets the federal government’s “SAVE” Plan, which is widely seen as an attempt to shore up the youth vote ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
“The President does not get to thwart the Constitution when it suits his political agenda,” Bailey declared. “I’m filing suit to halt his brazen attempt to curry favor with some citizens by forcing others to shoulder their debts.”
Bailey notes that “SAVE” will cost American taxpayers $475 billion, which is $45 billion more than its last student loan plan.
“With the stroke of his pen, Joe Biden is attempting to saddle working Missourians with a half trillion dollars in college debt. The United States Constitution makes clear that the President lacks the authority to unilaterally ‘cancel’ student loan debt for millions of Americans without express permission from Congress,” Bailey said in a statement Tuesday.
“The President does not get to thwart the Constitution when it suits his political agenda. I’m filing suit to halt his brazen attempt to curry favor with some citizens by forcing others to shoulder their debts. The Constitution will continue to mean something as long as I’m Attorney General.”
This one’s for the Constitution. pic.twitter.com/CvQjWRagqt
— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) April 9, 2024
The attorneys general of Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Dakota, Ohio, and Oklahoma have joined Bailey in filing the Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief.
The States assert in the complaint: “Just last year, the Supreme Court struck down an attempt by the President to force teachers, truckers, and farmers to pay for the student loan debt of other Americans—to the enormous tune of $430 billion. In striking down that attempt, the Court declared that the President cannot ‘unilaterally alter large sections of the American economy.’ Undeterred, the President is at it again, even bragging that ‘the Supreme Court blocked it. They blocked it. But that didn’t stop me.’”
The States note, “Yet again, the President is unilaterally trying to impose an extraordinarily expensive and controversial policy that he could not get through Congress. This latest attempt to sidestep the Constitution is only the most recent instance in a long but troubling pattern of the President relying on innocuous language from decades-old statutes to impose drastic, costly policy changes on the American people without their consent.”
In July of 2023, the United States Supreme Court struck down Biden’s previous Loan Forgiveness Program, ruling in a 6-3 decision, that the plan was unconstitutional because the massive $430 billion-plus impact on the federal budget lacked authority from Congress.
While the justices ruled that the individual borrowers who challenged the plan lacked standing to bring their case, the Court also “held that Missouri’s student loan servicing company, MOHELA, was an arm of Missouri’s state government, and therefore, granted the states standing to challenge the student loan plan.”
“The Constitution is clear: Congress has the power of the purse, not the President,” Bailey wrote on X, Tuesday. “Joe Biden cannot unilaterally ‘cancel’ hundreds of millions of dollars in student loan debt and force everyday Americans to pick up the tab.”
The Missouri AG said on Fox Business Tuesday that the issue is “personal” for him because he paid his own way through school “through blood, sweat and tears in the United States Army.”
This is personal for me. I paid for my school through blood, sweat and tears in the United States Army. At the end of the day, this harms Missourians, and we can't let Joe Biden saddle working Missouri families with Ivy League debt. pic.twitter.com/0zpESsvrDD
— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) April 9, 2024