The Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s obviously unconstitutional attempt to forgive half a trillion in student loan debt. This should surprise nobody, given that virtually everyone admitted the president does not have the authority to do this. (Here is then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stating as much.)
Democrats are going to freak out about this decision the same way they freak out about literally every single Supreme Court decision that doesn’t go their way. They will cry that this ruling makes the court “illegitimate,” and they will threaten the court with violence and with court-packing.
US ALLIES AND PEERS MOVE TOWARD REGULATING 'MISINFORMATION' ON BIG TECH
Stoking hatred toward the court is central to Democratic politics these days (even after assassination attempts aimed at altering outcomes). The question is whether forgiving student debt is actually part of the Democrats’ politics these days.
It might be! Student borrowers are disproportionately in the upper half of income earners and otherwise fit into Democratic constituencies. This would be a major transfer of wealth into the hands of Democrats, at the expense of everyone else (because it would accelerate inflation and add to the taxpayers' federal debt).
But because it would accelerate inflation to inject hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy out of nowhere, it’s unlikely the Democrats actually want to do this ahead of an election in which inflation, and the cost of living for the average family, is Biden’s biggest weakness.
If they actually wanted to forgive student loans, though, there’s a tricky way they could do that, and Pelosi knows what it is.
“People think that the president of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness," Pelosi once said. "He does not. He can postpone. He can delay. But he does not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress.”
Yes, there is a branch of the federal government that actually has the constitutional authority to pass laws, and it’s not the executive. Congress could pass a law that does exactly what Biden’s executive order pretended to do.
And if Democrats cannot get enough votes to pass their bill through Congress, they could try politics. If the party is willing to run on student debt forgiveness in 2022, they could start applying pressure to vulnerable Republicans by running ads in their districts: “Why won’t Rep. Smith vote for this bill to forgive student debt?”
If their bill really is that popular, either they can pressure enough Republicans to flip, or they can defeat enough Republicans for opposing it and thus take back Congress and immediately pass their bill in January 2025.
I don’t think they will do this, though. Attacking the court in the media is the goal here, not actually putting inflation on steroids by enriching the upper middle class.
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