


Using the age-old adage of “When at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again,” President Joe Biden is again trying to forgive millions of dollars in student loan debt. This time, he is flouting the Supreme Court’s decision in Biden v. Nebraska that struck down his prior plan as unconstitutional.
While the president’s latest iteration of student loan forgiveness is not as sweeping as the unconstitutional effort to forgive up to $20,000 of debt per borrower, the new plan will still be unfair to everyone who paid off their own or their children’s student loans or never attended college. Indeed, any attempt to forgive student loan debt unilaterally is extremely costly and unfair to taxpayers.
BIDEN HEADS TO WISCONSIN NECK AND NECK WITH TRUMPBiden’s Saving on a Valuable Education , or SAVE, plan would reform how the current income-driven repayment system is operated and how much borrowers in these plans would have to pay. The most notable change in the SAVE plan is the increase of the income exemption from 150% above the federal poverty line to 225% above the federal poverty line. This means borrowers who earn less than 225% above the poverty line, or approximately $33,000 per year, would not have to make monthly payments while having those months still be counted as payments against their debt. According to the Department of Education , more than 1 million borrowers would be eligible for these new $0 monthly payments. And borrowers with undergraduate loans who do not qualify for the $0 monthly payments would still see their monthly payments reduced by half.
The new plan is not as extensive as Biden’s first attempt, but it will be expensive. According to the Penn Wharton Budget Model , the SAVE plan will cost taxpayers approximately $475 billion over the next decade and could end up costing more than $550 billion before all is said and done. It will be yet another big spending plan that has become commonplace during the Biden administration, causing the worst inflation in 40 years.
Like his previous student loan forgiveness plan, the SAVE plan does nothing to address the continually rising cost of higher education and would instead unfairly transfer the burden of student loan debt from borrowers, who, on average, come from upper-class families and often have the expectation of higher income jobs after graduation, to every American.
The Biden administration may frame the SAVE plan as a reform to the student loan program or an attempt to make student loans less burdensome on borrowers, but that doesn’t change the fact that it would force lower- and middle-income Americans to subsidize the voluntary debt that higher-income Americans took out to attend college. There are already programs in place for borrowers who want to have their debt forgiven or are seeking help to pay off their student loans. For example, college graduates are eligible to work for a nonprofit group or government entity and enroll in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which will provide loan forgiveness after 10 years of service.
Biden’s attempts to usurp the authority of the Supreme Court on this issue are egregious. His new student loan debt forgiveness plan is just as costly, unfair, and illegal as the first, and taxpayers who were relieved by the Supreme Court’s decision setting Biden straight will be unhappy that they have to go through this process again.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM RESTORING AMERICAEric Maus is a federal government affairs associate for Citizens Against Government Waste.