Ga. joins states challenging new student loan plan
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr has joined counterparts in six other Republican-led states in suing the Biden administration over its latest student loan plan.
President Joe Biden announced plans last week to deliver forgiveness of some or all of the debts of more than 30 million borrowers at a price tag of an estimated $475 billion.
“While a college degree still is a ticket to the middle class, that ticket is becoming much too expensive,” Biden said during an event on a college campus in Wisconsin. “The ability for workingand middle-class folks to repay their student loans has become so burdensome that a lot can’t repay it for even decades after being in school.”
But Carr attacked the plan as an illegal waste of tax dollars in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that rejected an earlier student-loan forgiveness plan.
“Georgia taxpayers have made it clear that they know it’s wrong to be forced to pay off other people’s student loans, particularly those with the highest earning potential,” he said. “This is election-year politics and an egregious example of federal overreach.”
The Supreme Court struck down last year’s plan as unconstitutional in a 6-3 decision, ruling that Biden sought to carry it out without express authority from Congress.
However, the new plan is based on a different law. The Higher Education Act allows the secretary of education to “compromise, waive or release” federal student loans.
The 2023 plan was part of an economic stimulus package tied to the pandemic.
Besides Georgia, the other states involved in the lawsuit include Arkansas, Florida, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, and Oklahoma.