Checkmate: Reporter Expertly Busts Biden WH Over Phony Student Debt Plan ‘Authority’ Excuse

We reported Wednesday on what steps the White House took to determine that President Biden purportedly had the power to unilaterally implement the student loan forgiveness plan that he announced this week.

For those who missed it, an August 23rd memo written by Dept. of Ed. General Counsel Lisa Brown stated that Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has the legal authority to force taxpayers to pay for the student loan debts of others thanks to the 2003 HEROES Act, which is a reversal of a January 2021 DOE memo which stated that they didn’t have such authority.

“The HEROES Act, first enacted in the wake of the September 11 attacks, provides the Secretary broad authority to grant relief from student loan requirements during specific periods (a war, other military operation, or national emergency, such as the present COVID-19 pandemic) and for specific purposes (including to address the financial harms of such a war, other military operation, or emergency),” the memo read.

This dubious justification caught the attention of Fox News White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, who asked press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre during the Thursday press briefing how they could cite the COVID pandemic for their rationale considering just a few months ago the Biden administration essentially argued in court that the pandemic was over when they were trying to justify allowing Title 42, a Trump-era policy designed to limit the spread of COVID-19 from illegal immigrants who came from countries with high rates of communicable diseases, to expire in May.

As she did with other questions related to Biden’s plan during the Thursday briefing (and the Wednesday one), Jean-Pierre bumbled through another non-answer, mumbling something about how there would still be “some folks who are having a hard time” paying off their student loans.

When Heinrich interjected, “…because of the economy?” which would be an interesting excuse considering the Biden administration’s continued false painting of the U.S. economy as sunny and rosy, Jean-Pierre then proclaimed it was “because they are in a different [income] bracket.”

Watch:

The Biden administration argued covid was over to lift Title 42 at the border, but is now arguing the covid emergency as the justification for taking on $500 billion in student loans. Checkmate question here from @JacquiHeinrich. Well done: pic.twitter.com/B2WeEZKS7l

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) August 25, 2022

So basically what Jean-Pierre inartfully confirmed in her statement during the Thursday briefing was that Biden’s decision to do a dictatorial end-run around Congress was based not so much on the coronavirus pandemic but because there were people who Biden believed would still need help in this supposedly amazing economy because they are not in the right income bracket or something, even though members of Biden’s own party and some of his apologists in the press have said that what he’s put in place will mostly benefit people who don’t need the help at the expense of the middle class, many of who have debts of their own they are trying to pay off and who are also already struggling to make ends meet thanks to staggering Bidenflation and shrinkflation.

In other words, KJP confirmed that the White House’s excuse for having the “authority” to wipe out a certain amount of student loan debt to the tune of an estimated $500 billion in taxpayer dollars doesn’t pass the smell test, which is yet another reason for Republicans to consider impeachment proceedings against Joe Biden in the event they take control of Congress after the midterm elections.