THE EXECUTIVE IS NOT THE LEGISLATIVE:

Last year, President Biden announced that he would cancel student-loan debts of up to $20,000 for millions of borrowers. While that policy had been under discussion since the first days of his administration, only after the announcement did the administration's lawyers advance a legal justification for the action--that it came under the 2002 HEROES Act.

That law was passed to allow the Secretary of Education to waive or modify student debts for service members or others suffering financial hardships "as a result of wars, military operations or national emergencies." Biden's legal team came up with the argument that, since the law pertained to "emergencies" and the Covid pandemic had been deemed an emergency, the president was acting within his authority.

Many pointed out that the president himself had said that the Covid "emergency" was over and that, since the passage of the HEROES Act, Congress had declined to enact bills that would have directly dealt with student-loan cancellation. In short, the government's argument was a gigantic stretch.

[M]r. Biden's student debt forgiveness scheme is far more expansive -- and a questionable reading of the two-decade-old law. When lawmakers passed it in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, it is unlikely they were envisioning a future president issuing audacious, across-the-board student loan relief, as opposed to, say, pausing loan payments while soldiers are deployed in a foreign war or helping hurricane survivors rebuild. The straightforward reading of the law's purpose is that it permits aid targeted at those who would struggle to repay their loans as a direct result of a serious emergency.

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