{"id":94008,"date":"2023-06-30T19:17:33","date_gmt":"2023-07-01T00:17:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=94008"},"modified":"2023-06-30T19:17:33","modified_gmt":"2023-07-01T00:17:33","slug":"94008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=94008","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t agree that President Trump’s use of DoD funds to build a wall was wrong. The Constitution makes clear in Article 4 \u00a7 4<\/a> the requirement to protect the states from invasion, and if hoards of illegal aliens coming into the country doesn’t qualify, I don’t know what would.<\/p>\n

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On CNN of all places…………<\/p>\n

Why the Supreme Court got it right on student loans<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0Ilya Somin is a professor of law at George Mason University, the Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute and the author of \u201c<\/em>Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration and Political Freedom<\/em><\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

In\u00a0a lawsuit brought by six state governments<\/a>, the Supreme Court on Friday ruled that President Joe Biden\u2019s massive $430 billion student loan forgiveness plan is illegal because it was never authorized by Congress, and the Constitution gives Congress \u2013 not the president \u2013 the power to determine how federal funds are spent<\/strong>. The court made the right decision: If the administration had won, Biden and future presidents would have been empowered to use vague statutes to usurp Congress\u2019 constitutional control over the federal budget. Moreover, because of the context for this case, it also would have allowed the president to abuse emergency powers for partisan ends.<\/p>\n

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The administration\u2019s loan forgiveness plan<\/a>, announced in August 2022, would have canceled up to $20,000 for those with Pell Grants (federal grants for low-income students<\/a>) or up to $10,000 in other federal student-loan debt for single borrowers with incomes under $125,000 per year and under $250,000 for married couples or heads of households. The legal rationale for the plan is based on\u00a0a provision<\/a>\u00a0of the\u00a02003 HEROES Act<\/a>, a law that was enacted in large part to help people affected by the War on Terror, particularly members of the armed forces who might have trouble repaying loans while deployed abroad.<\/div>\n
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But\u00a0the\u00a0Biden\u00a0administration\u00a0was\u00a0relying on a provision of the act that gives the secretary of education authority to \u201cwaive or modify\u201d federal student loan requirements in order to ensure that recipients of financial assistance who have been affected by a national emergency \u201care not placed in a worse position financially in relation to that financial assistance\u201d because they were affected by the emergency. The administration claimed\u00a0beneficiaries of the loan-forgiveness plan qualified\u00a0because they have been negatively affected financially as a result of the\u00a0Covid-19 national emergency<\/a>\u00a0declared by then-President Donald Trump in March 2020.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court on Friday rightly ruled that the HEROES Act\u2019s language comes nowhere near authorizing such a massive loan forgiveness plan. As Chief Justice John Roberts explained\u00a0in the majority opinion<\/a>, \u201cThe authority to \u2018modify\u2019 statutes and regulations allows the Secretary to make modest adjustments and additions to existing provisions, not transform them.\u201d The word \u201cwaive\u201d also doesn\u2019t give the government the power to forgive loans on a massive scale, because, as Roberts noted, the government conceded that the term \u201cwaiver\u201d as used in the HEROES Act cannot refer to waiving loan repayments.<\/p>\n

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In addition, for the\u00a0 majority of the more than 40 million borrowers<\/a>\u00a0the White House claims would be eligible for forgiveness, the government presented no proof that, as a result of Covid, they were placed \u201cin a worse position financially.\u201d\u00a0Over 80% of employed college graduates<\/a>\u00a0did not even report a decrease in salary during the pandemic, and\u00a0few suffered prolonged unemployment<\/a>, according to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The lack of evidence that most beneficiaries\u2019 ability to pay was impaired by the pandemic seems to me a stronger basis for the court\u2019s ruling than Roberts\u2019 analysis of the terms \u201cwaive\u201d and \u201cmodify.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Another key issue in the case was whether the states challenging the program had \u201cstanding\u201d to sue, which requires them to have suffered an injury as a result of the loan forgiveness plan. The court rightly ruled that Missouri, at least, had standing because it has a state-created student-loan servicer that stands to lose revenue if some of the loans it processes are forgiven. An injury to that entity is an injury to the state, because it\u2019s a public corporation \u201ccreated\u201d and under to control of the state, and a \u201cpart of the Government itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

The court also rightly ruled that the administration\u2019s ultra-broad interpretation of the HEROES Act\u00a0ran\u00a0afoul of Supreme Court precedent on the \u201cmajor questions\u201d doctrine. The doctrine\u00a0requires Congress<\/a>\u00a0to \u201cspeak clearly\u201d when authorizing an executive branch agency to exercise \u201cdecisions of vast \u2018economic and political significance.\u2019\u201d In other words, if the statute is ambiguous, courts must presume that Congress didn\u2019t give the agency the power the agency is trying to claim.<\/p>\n

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In this case, as Roberts put it, the economic and political significance of the administration\u2019s action is \u201cstaggering by any measure,\u201d and the HEROES Act is \u2013 at the very least \u2013 far from clear about granting this power to the executive. As Justice Amy Coney Barrett pointed out in her concurring opinion, the major questions doctrine wasn\u2019t necessary to invalidate the administration plan. But it \u201creinforces that conclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

While the major questions doctrine has been criticized by some commentators, it is an application of\u00a0the common-sense principle<\/a>\u00a0that a large-scale delegation of power requires more clarity than a narrow one. Barrett made\u00a0a similar point in her concurrence, noting that \u201ccommonsense principles of communication\u201d lead us to expect greater clarity when delegating very broad authority to an agent.\u00a0A legal document authorizing a contractor to \u201crepair and upgrade\u201d a house is reasonably interpreted to give her the power to replace a broken door but not to tear the house down and build a new one \u2013 even if a clever lawyer could potentially interpret the latter as just a\u00a0type\u00a0of \u201cupgrade.\u201d<\/p>\n

The major questions doctrine helps guard against the executive usurpation of congressional power that could occur if the White House could use vague statutory language to enact sweeping policies that otherwise could never have gotten through Congress. In a dissenting opinion for the three liberal justices, Justice Elena Kagan argued that the HEROES Act must be interpreted expansively in order to give presidents flexibility during emergencies. But Roberts rightly rejected such a \u201cgrant [of] unlimited power.\u201d<\/p>\n

Presidents of both parties can be tempted to use emergency powers as a pretext to enact policies they otherwise can\u2019t pass. In 2019, Trump used a dubious emergency declaration to try to divert Pentagon funds to build a wall along the southern border. Trump\u2019s emergency declaration\u00a0was bogus<\/a>, and the statutes he cited\u00a0didn\u2019t give him the power to transfer military funds<\/a>. His diversion could have\u00a0set a dangerous precedent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Democrats rightly condemned Trump\u2019s actions, and Biden rightly terminated the diversion<\/a>\u00a0when he took office, thereby also ending ongoing litigation challenging Trump\u2019s actions. Unfortunately, Biden\u2019s loan forgiveness policy attempted to repeat Trump\u2019s scheme on a larger\u00a0financial\u00a0scale, diverting some\u00a040 times more funds<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Biden\u2019s abuse of emergency powers,\u00a0like Trump\u2019s before\u00a0it<\/a>, would\u00a0likely have caused more harm than good. His student loan forgiveness plan would have been\u00a0a waste<\/a>\u00a0of taxpayer funds when the US is already\u00a0facing a looming fiscal crisis<\/a>, a\u00a0regressive<\/a>\u00a0policy in that it helps the\u00a0relatively affluent<\/a>\u00a0(former college students) and potentially\u00a0inflationary<\/a>\u00a0by infusing vast amounts of additional cash into the economy.<\/p>\n

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Those who differ on policy should still be able to agree that it is dangerous to give one politician the power to circumvent the Constitution and divert federal funds to political projects not authorized by Congress. Even if you trust Biden to wield such power wisely, you likely do not have similar faith in the next Republican president \u2013 and vice versa.<\/form>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t agree that President Trump’s use of DoD funds to build a wall was wrong. The Constitution makes clear in Article 4 \u00a7 4 the requirement to protect the states from invasion, and if hoards of illegal aliens coming into the country doesn’t qualify, I don’t know what would. On CNN of all places………… … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,14,59,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-courts","category-editorial-o-the-day","category-education-schools","category-goobermint"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=94008"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94009,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94008\/revisions\/94009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=94008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=94008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}