A joint resolution offered on Sept. 5 by U.S. Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and John Thune (R-SD) would overturn the Biden administration’s income-driven repayment rule, which is designed to forgive specific higher education student loans.
President Joe Biden on June 30 announced the final income-driven repayment (IDR) rule after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Biden v. Nebraska, which struck down the president’s student loan bailout executive order. Biden’s new SAVE Plan would overhaul the IDR program — which was designed to aid lower-income borrowers in paying back their loans — and would forgive student loan balances after 10 years of payments for certain borrowers, including those in high-income households, according to the lawmakers.
“President Biden’s plan is not a fix,” Sen. Cassidy wrote in an opinion piece published online yesterday by Fox News. “It is a politically motivated giveaway that forces taxpayers to shoulder the responsibility of paying off someone else’s debt. We need real leadership to address this issue.”
On Tuesday, Sen. Cassidy sponsored Senate Joint Resolution (S.J.Res.) 43 with 20 GOP original cosponsors, including lead original cosponsor Sen. Thune. If enacted, the resolution would disapprove and disallow the rule submitted by the U.S. Education Department related to ‘‘Improving Income Driven Repayment for the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program and the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program.”
“This latest attempt to cancel student debt would allow a majority of bachelor’s degree student loan borrowers to not even pay back the principal on their loans,” wrote Sen. Cassidy, ranking member of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee. “I hope all of our colleagues will join us in supporting this… resolution and stand up for the families who will be stuck with a policy that the administration is pursuing not to be fair to all, but rather to favor the few.”
Sen. Thune pointed out that instead of creating a real plan to lower the costs of higher education, President Biden continues to propose “budget-busting student loan bailouts” that would force 87 percent of Americans who do not have student loan debt to bear the costs of the 13 percent of Americans who do.
“It’s incredibly unfair to those who never incurred student debt because they didn’t attend college in the first place or because they either worked their way through school or their family pinched pennies and planned for higher education,” said Sen. Thune. “I’m proud to join my colleagues in introducing this resolution that would overturn President Biden’s latest misguided and fiscally irresponsible student loan bailout.”
Among the 19 other original cosponsors of S.J.Res. 43 are U.S. Sens. Steve Daines (R-MT) and Joni Ernst (R-IA).
Sens. Thune, Cassidy, Ernst, and Daines in February also introduced the Stop Reckless Student Loan Actions Act of 2023, S. 506, with several other Republicans. S. 506 would limit executive authority to suspend or defer federal student loan payments or interest accrual on such loans, and cancel federal student loans, according to the bill’s text.
Specifically, S. 506 would prohibit the president or the Education Department from suspending or deferring federal student loan payments or the accrual of interest on such loans for borrowers with annual household incomes over 400 percent of the federal poverty line, the text says.
The bill remains under consideration in the Senate HELP Committee.