US President Joe Biden pledged on Friday to press ahead with a new plan to ease the burden on millions of borrowers, while blaming Republicans for “hypocrisy” for origin of the Supreme Court’s decision that overturned its original plan.
Mr Biden said student loan payment obligations would resume in the coming weeks, but he would work under the authority of the Higher Education Act to launch a new program designed to mitigate the threat of student default. borrowers if they fall behind in the coming year.
Hours after the Supreme Court decision, Mr Biden made comments from the White House, trying to stay on the political offensive, even as the ruling undermined a key promise to young voters, who will be essential to his re-election campaign in 2024.
Mr Biden delivered most of his remarks in a measured tone, but raised his voice at the end when a reporter asked if he had given borrowers false hope.
“I didn’t give false hopes,” he said vehemently. The Republicans snatched away the hope they had been given. »
Citing what he called billions of dollars in benefits for the haves under the Trump administration, he said: “These elected Republicans just couldn’t stomach the idea of relieving working-class Americans and the middle class. »
“The hypocrisy of elected Republicans is staggering,” he added.
Senior administration officials said they had been meeting for weeks to discuss how to handle the Supreme Court’s expected reversal of Mr. Biden’s original plan.
Election ramifications aside, progressive Democrats in Congress and activists have been clamoring for a quick and substantial response from the White House to the court’s decision. Natalia Abrams, president and founder of the Student Debt Crisis Center, said the blame lay “squarely” with Mr Biden.
“The president has the power, and must muster the will, to secure the essential assistance that families across the country desperately need,” said Mr.me Abrams in a statement.
Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, one of her party’s leading left-wing voices, hammered, “The president has more tools to write off student debt — and he needs to use them. »
The Republican Party has long argued that student loan repayment is a matter of fairness, and it has welcomed the move. Betsy DeVos, who served as education secretary under President Donald Trump, called Biden’s original plan “deeply unfair to the majority of Americans who don’t have student loans.”
Republicans currently seeking their party’s 2024 presidential nomination lined up to applaud the decision, with former Vice President Mike Pence saying he was “pleased the court overruled efforts by the radical left to use the money of taxpayers who have played by the rules and paid off their debts to cancel the debt of bankers and lawyers in New York, San Francisco and Washington”.
By trying to blame the end of the plan on the Republican Party, Joe Biden’s reelection campaign could, in the short term, continue to make the issue of student loans one of its strong points. But that may ultimately offer little comfort to the 43 million Americans who will now have to start paying back their student loans.