A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.
Conservative Supreme Court justices took a predictably dim view Tuesday of President Joe Biden’s controversial plan to forgive up to $20,000 in federal student loans for some borrowers and wipe away nearly half a trillion in debt.
Biden announced the plan last August, just before the midterm election. He had been facing mounting pressure from Democratic lawmakers who called on the president to take executive action as it became clear Congress could not muscle through a more lasting proposal.
Whether the debt forgiveness helped Democrats overperform in that election is up for debate, but the one-sided politics of the plan was a key sticking point for Supreme Court justices who have been skeptical of Biden’s authority to do things without congressional approval.
RELATED: Takeaways from the arguments
One takeaway from Tuesday’s hearing that surprised me: Justice Amy Coney Barrett sounded like a potential swing vote.
The oral arguments were in two cases challenging the program: one brought by a group of Republican-led states and the other brought by two individuals who did not qualify for the full benefits of the forgiveness program. Many of the conservative justices were concerned with fairness, executive overreach and the mechanics of whether states could bring their suit.
Why give borrowers this forgiveness instead of people who worked to pay off their debt early or were unable to take on debt and skipped college?
Those are valid questions, and the idea of debt forgiveness splits the country in half. In national exit polling conducted for the 2022 midterm election, 50% of midterm voters, mostly Democrats, approved of Biden’s debt relief plan, and 47%, mostly Republicans, opposed it.
At…
Read the full article here