The White House on Monday said it will veto a joint congressional resolution that would block the Biden administration's student loan debt forgiveness program.
The resolution, HJ Res. 45, led by Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., and Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., would overturn President Joe Biden's "unlawful student loan transfer scheme after the Government Accountability Office recently ruled the action was eligible for congressional action," according to a news release on Good's website.
Biden's proposal would forgive student loan debt of $10,000 or up to $20,000 if borrowers received a Pell Grant. The Penn-Wharton Budget Model estimated the program will cost $300 billion to $900 billion over the next 10 years.
In a Statement of Administration Policy, the White House said the resolution "is an unprecedented attempt to undercut our historic economic recovery and would deprive more than 40 million hard-working Americans of much-needed student debt relief."
"If enacted, HJ Res. 45 would weaken America's middle class," the White House statement said. "Nearly 90% of the relief provided by the Department of Education would go to Americans earning less than $75,000 per year, and no relief would go to any individual or household in the top 5% of incomes. Americans should be able to have a little more breathing room as they recover from the economic strains associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
"If Congress were to pass HJ Res. 45, the President would veto it."
Said Good in an email to Newsmax: "Given his fiscal track record, it is no surprise that President Biden would oppose any action to undo his unlawful and unfair executive actions to transfer hundreds of billions of dollars worth of burdensome student loans onto the backs of American taxpayers."
The GOP-led House likely will vote on the resolution this week, and it is expected to pass. It would then head to the Democratic-controlled Senate.
The fate of the program is in the hands of the Supreme Court, which heard arguments in February whether the Department of Education properly used the HEROES Act, a 9/11-era law that gave student loan debt relief to soldiers fighting the War on Terror, as basis for the program. It is one of the major cases on the court's docket and a decision is expected in the coming weeks.
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