President Joe Biden and his administration are gearing up for the Supreme Court to strike down their student-loan forgiveness program, sources informed The Wall Street Journal.
Although White House officials have maintained a confident public profile, some in the administration told the Journal this week that they are all but certain the conservative-majority court will reverse it.
The paper noted that officials have been discussing policy alternatives if the court strikes down the measure, with some analyzing experimental routes to approve massive debt cancellation.
An avenue to the scale of the original proposal is unlikely, however.
"We remain confident in our legal authority," said Abdullah Hasan, White House assistant press secretary. "No president has fought harder for student debt relief than President Biden."
The initial plan, announced in August last year, sought to help 40 million borrowers by providing $10,000 in loan forgiveness to those making less than $125,000 annually and $20,000 in forgiveness for Pell Grant recipients.
But Republican state prosecutors have targeted the program from its inception, leading a multistate effort that culminated with it being temporarily blocked in October and, eventually, having the high court hear the case.
National GOP lawmakers, with the help of Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, and Jon Tester of Montana, also tried to legislatively block the program.
Yet, Biden vetoed that bill Wednesday, saying in a Twitter video that he was "never going to apologize for helping working and middle-class Americans as they recover from" the COVID-19 pandemic.
A spokesperson for the Department of Education said that the department "will be in direct touch with borrowers" soon and is "ramping up our communications with servicers well before repayment resumes."
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