Federal Judge Rebukes Joe Biden, “In This Country We Are Not Ruled By An All-Powerful Executive With A Pen And A Phone,” Rules Student Loan Forgiveness Plan Illegal

By
Gary Fenster
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A federal judge in Texas has struck down President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program ruling it is unconstitutional. The lawsuit was filed by a conservative group, the Job Creators Network Foundation, on behalf of two borrowers who did not qualify for the program.

U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman found the law Biden tried to hide behind, the 2003 law known as the HEROES Act, does not give the executive branch congressional authorization to create the student loan forgiveness program.

“Whether the Program constitutes good public policy is not the role of this Court to determine,” Pittman wrote. “Still, no one can plausibly deny that it is either one of the largest delegations of legislative power to the executive branch, or one of the largest exercises of legislative power without congressional authority in the history of the United States.”

“The program is thus an unconstitutional exercise of Congress’s legislative power and must be vacated,” Pittman said.

“In this country, we are not ruled by an all-powerful executive with a pen and a phone.

“Instead, we are ruled by a Constitution that provides for three distinct and independent branches of government.

“As President James Madison warned, ‘the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.'”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said: 

“We strongly disagree with the District Court’s ruling on our student debt relief program.

“For the 26 million borrowers who have already given the Department of Education the necessary information to be considered for debt relief – 16 million of whom have already been approved for relief – the Department will hold onto their information so it can quickly process their relief once we prevail in court.”

The Justice Department will appeal the decision.

According to CNN:

In the case ruled on Thursday, one plaintiff did not qualify for the student loan forgiveness program because her loans are not held by the federal government and the other plaintiff is only eligible for $10,000 in debt relief because he did not receive a Pell grant.

They argued that they could not voice their disagreement with the program’s rules because the administration did not put it through a formal notice-and-comment rule making process under the Administrative Procedure Act.

“This ruling protects the rule of law which requires all Americans to have their voices heard by their federal government,” said Elaine Parker, president of Job Creators Network Foundation, in a statement Thursday.

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