President Biden has vetoed the Republican-led resolution that would have destroyed his student loan debt relief plan.
Video from President Biden:
Congressional Republicans waged an effort to pass a bill that blocked my administration’s plan to provide up to $20,000 in student debt forgiveness to working and middle-class Americans.
I will not shy away from helping hard-working people.
That is why I am vetoing this bill. pic.twitter.com/ZeYEm4LOjz
— President Biden (@POTUS) June 7, 2023
Biden sent a veto message to the House of Representatives:
I hereby return without my approval HJ Res. 45, a resolution that would disapprove of the Department of Education’s rule regarding “waivers and modifications of federal student loans.”
Since day one, my administration has fought to make college cheaper and the student loan system more manageable. My administration favors the largest increase in Pell Grants in the past decade – a combined $900 increase to the maximum student award over the past 2 years – and has a plan to double the maximum Pell Grant to nearly $2029 by 2029 13,000. This means more money in students’ pockets to pay for their studies. To help people who had to borrow to go to college, my administration built a student loan system that works. The Department of Education has proposed the most generous repayment plan ever, cutting student loan payments in half. It also reformed the government loan forgiveness program to make it easier for hundreds of thousands of government officials to get the debt relief they deserve.
The pandemic has been devastating to families across the country. To provide borrowers with the essential relief they need as they recover from the economic strains associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Education has created a program to provide up to $10,000 in debt relief – and up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients – to more than 40 million hard-working Americans. Nearly 90 percent of this aid would go to Americans earning less than $75,000 a year, and none would go to any individual or household in the top 5 percent of income earners.
The demand for this lighting is undeniable. In less than 4 weeks – during the time the application for student debt forgiveness was available – 26 million people have applied or were automatically eligible for debt relief. At least 16 million of those borrowers could have already received debt relief if opponents of this program had not filed meritorious lawsuits.
The Department of Education’s action is based on decades-old authority granted by Congress. Multiple governments over the past two decades have used this authority, following the same procedures as my administration, to protect borrowers from the effects of national emergencies and military deployment. The exercise of this authority by the Department of Education has never before been subject to the Congressional Review Act.
It is an embarrassment to working families across the country that lawmakers continue this unprecedented effort to deny critical aid to millions of their own constituents, even as several of the same lawmakers have had tens of thousands of dollars of their own corporate loans forgiven by the federal government.
I remain committed to continuing to make college affordable and provide this critical relief to borrowers as they attempt to recover from a once-in-a-century pandemic.
That is why I am vetoing this resolution.
President Biden continues to fight for debt relief for student loan borrowers. The only reason the bill got through the Senate was because a few Democratic senators like Manchin and Tester along with Independent Sinema joined the Republican side.
Both the House and Senate don’t have the votes to overturn President Biden’s veto, so the president’s student loan forgiveness plan will live another day, and younger voters will remember Joe Biden who fought for them when they cast their vote released in 2024.
