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“Pay what you owe.” It’s a simple, but important, directive. Whether it was my parents insisting I paid back the five dollars I borrowed from my brother, or my drill sergeant ensuring I completed the requisite number of pushups for an unkempt bunk, the importance of paying one’s debts was drilled into me from an early age. Hardworking Americans would live by this advice, and our economy and communities thrived as a result.
But now, President Joe Biden’s unconstitutional decision to unilaterally “cancel” students’ debt puts the underpinning of our commercial system at serious risk. That’s why as Missouri’s Attorney General, I will head to the United States Supreme Court to oppose this illegal and harmful policy.
There’s no such thing as “canceling a debt.” The debt’s weight is just shifted. In this case, it’s thrust on the backs of the American taxpayers, who had no say in taking on that debt. But that won’t stop Joe Biden and his Administration. They pushed through an unconstitutional loan forgiveness plan – knowing full well they didn’t have the necessary authority from Congress. In 2021, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi agreed, saying, “The president can’t do it… It would take an act of Congress, not an executive order, to cancel student loan debt.”
The Constitution clearly states that Congress has the power of the purse. The executive branch cannot unilaterally wipe away hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan debt – debts American taxpayers have funded with the expectation the debts would be repaid – without express approval by Congress. Since Congress has not passed any law wiping student loan debt off the books, Biden’s action is illegal on its face.
SUPREME COURT TO HEAR GOP STATE CHALLENGE TO PANDEMIC-RELATED BIDEN STUDENT LOAN RELIEF PLAN
Yet Biden’s illegal action runs deeper than simply wiping debt off the government ledger: it is an intentional transfer of wealth from working-class Americans to lawyers, government bureaucrats, and graduates with a master’s degree in gender studies. It’s fundamentally unfair to the people who didn’t take out loans or chose not to go to college.
And even some of the president’s fellow Democrats have described the forgiveness program as a blatantly political attempt to win at the ballot box.
This political, unconstitutional redistribution of wealth is personal to me. As a combat veteran, I paid for my education in blood, sweat, and tears. I come from humble beginnings, and we didn’t have tens of thousands of dollars to spend on a college education. I had to find a way to pursue my dreams of earning a college degree without saddling myself with debt I may not be able to repay.
After graduation from the University of Missouri-Columbia, I was commissioned as an Officer in the United States Army and deployed twice to support Operation Iraqi Freedom. When I returned from deployment In 2009, I used the GI bill to enroll at the University of Missouri School of Law. I could have never imagined that one day I would come before the United States Supreme Court to defend the rights of my fellow Missourians.
When the president tries to buy off one constituency with the tax dollars of another, the American people lose. But what’s worse is President Biden knowingly threw nearly 27 million Americans into financial limbo by promising “relief” that he knows is actually illegal. And in doing so, he taught a generation of Americans a false lesson about fairness and what it means to take on a debt.
As Missouri’s Attorney General, I will never stop fighting to uphold the Constitution and to defend the people of Missouri from harmful federal policies. With Joe Biden in the White House, that means I will never stop fighting against the Biden administration’s heavy hand of the administrative state.
