Tag: student loans

Biden signs bill ending COVID national emergency with month to spare

WASHINGTON — President Biden signed a bill Monday ending the COVID-19 national emergency more than three years after it went into effect.

Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, issued the proclamation in March 2020 to temporarily expand the executive branch’s power to steer funds to battle the virus.


President Biden signed a bill Monday that put an end to the COVID-19 national emergency.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

It’s unclear what immediate effect Biden’s signature will have on linked US policies, such as immigration policy and his student debt forgiveness plan.

Biden signed the legislation behind closed doors on the eve of his trip Tuesday to Northern Ireland and the White House acknowledged the milestone without fanfare in a brief late-afternoon email that read: “On Monday, April 10, 2023, the President signed into law: H.J.Res. 7, which terminates the national emergency related to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The legislation drafted by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) passed the House 229-197 in February, with a handful of Democratic supporters, and then the Senate 68-23 last month with about half of the chamber’s Democrats voting in favor.


Migrants recently released by U.S. Border Patrol walk to a Catholic shelter after being tested for COVID at a facility in McAllen.
Ending the emergency terminates the Title 42 migration policy.
David Butow/Redux

Biden planned on ending both the national emergency and a separate public health emergency in May, according to the White House.
HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP via Getty Images

In January, the White House said that Biden would end both the national emergency and a separate public health emergency on May 11 after more than 1 million Americans died from the respiratory disease that originated in Wuhan, China.

The Justice Department has said that ending the emergency would terminate the Title 42 migration policy that allows for the rapid deportation of people who illegally cross the US-Mexico border.

The Biden administration has eased enforcement of Title 42 by gradually allowing more people into the US to await asylum rulings, but thousands of migrants have still been deported each month under the policy, which would have to be replaced with a new plan to address record-high illegal crossings.

Biden also invoked the national emergency last year when announcing plans just before the midterm elections to forgive up to $20,000 in federal student debt per borrower. Critics say that Biden exceeded his legal authority and the Supreme Court is reviewing that plan.

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‘Teacher’ Randi Weingarten’s ignorant, anti-democratic rant

Randi Weingarten — the nation’s top teacher, in a sense — seems ignorant of what any child could learn about government from “Schoolhouse Rock.”

The American Federation of Teachers boss made that painfully clear (and we mean painfully) Tuesday by launching into an unhinged tirade in front of the Supreme Court, as justices were hearing challenges to President Joe Biden’s college-loan-forgiveness plan.

“This is what really pisses me off,” she fumed, literally screaming and jumping. During the pandemic, “small businesses were hurting, and we helped them. . . . Big businesses were hurting, and we helped them. And it didn’t go to the Supreme Court.” Yet, “all of a sudden, when it’s about our students . . . the corporations challenge it, the student-loan lenders challenge it.”

Hello? Yes, federal aid helped businesses during the pandemic but only after Congress passed COVID rescue packages to keep the economy afloat. Neither President Donald Trump nor President Biden unilaterally ordered handouts to anyone.


The Supreme Court was hearing challenges to President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.
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Yet Weingarten (a lawyer as well as an educator!) claims it’s now fine for Biden to forgive hundreds of billions in debt from student loans without lawmakers’ say-so. And that it’s “not fair” for anyone to even challenge that in court.

If only she’d watched those “Schoolhouse Rock” shorts, explaining the separation of powers: Congress passes laws and holds Uncle Sam’s “purse strings.” If student loans are wiped out, that counts as a hit on the US Treasury, even if funds covering those balances (as much as $1 trillion) get rolled into the national debt, as they would.

The president is supposed to execute laws Congress passes; he can’t simply shower mountains of taxpayer dollars on whatever causes he chooses. And if he tries, Americans have every right to ask the courts to stop him.

Yet Biden didn’t even try for lawmakers’ OK on his debt-relief plan; he simply decided to bypass Congress altogether. That’s a thumb in the eye not just to the system but to lawmakers — and the voters who elected them.

Even Team Biden itself admitted he couldn’t act without Congress — until it suddenly changed its mind last year, claiming the power under a beyond-dubious reading of the post-9/11 HEROES Act, which offered relief to soldiers heading to war.

Look: A one-time erasure of student debt never made sense. It cheats those who never had such loans or had them but paid them off. And it benefits only a small group of Americans who, in many cases, won’t truly need the aid. And average taxpayers foot the bill.

But what’s really scary is that the national teachers-union head is so ignorant (or pretends to be) about how our democracy works. No wonder America’s schools are in such sorry shape.

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Think Biden’s student loan write-offs are unfair? Just take a look at the fine print

President Joe Biden’s plan to instantly write off up to $20,000 in individual loans is bad enough, costing the taxpayers north of $300 billion — but the rest of his idea is even worse: He wants to the public to eat most all future student debt, too.

Yes, “Part 1” is horrifically unfair: Folks who chose not to take out such loans, or got them paid off, or never went to college at all, will be picking up the tab for college-educated borrowers with excellent incomes. Yet the rest of the scheme would make this injustice permanent.

Biden would roll back borrowers’ maximum monthly payment on undergrad loans to just 5% of “discretionary” income — and cut the amount of earnings considered “discretionary.” Then he’d wipe out all remaining debt after just 10 years for many borrowers.

The payment limit by itself is huge: The White House boasts it means “no borrower earning under 225% of the federal poverty level … will have to make a monthly payment” at all. And even those earning more than $50,000 right after graduating would face trivial payments — barely denting the principal before Biden sticks taxpayers with the bill.

In short, this is a recipe for nearly free “loans” for an ever-increasing number of people, courtesy of the general public. Until the public goes broke, that is. The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimates the full plan could drive total future costs toward $1 trillion.

Here’s the key problem, as Reason’s Robby Soave explains: The arrangement gives both universities and students an incentive to “screw the taxpayers.” Students wouldn’t care how much they borrowed, since they wouldn’t have to pay back more than 5% of their “discretionary” income for just 10 years, no matter how high the balance. Universities could then jack up tuition, knowing students could simply borrow more to cover the upcharge, and incur no additional cost to themselves. That’s crazy.

One possible way to contain the damage: cap tuition. Taxpayers would still wind up paying a fortune, but the system might not go haywire so quickly. Alas, Biden’s plan barely pays lip service to this idea: “Colleges have [a moral] obligation to keep prices reasonable and ensure borrowers get value for their investments” is all the White House says.

What a knee-slapper: As the fact sheet notes, inflation-adjusted tuitions have tripled over the past 40 years, and that’s largely because of government aid: With Uncle Sam chipping in, universities simply jacked up prices.

As for borrowers getting “value for their investment” — ha! Instead, many just get liberal mush that fails to win them jobs paying enough to repay their loans.

It’s works great for the left: Schools full of liberal faculty and staff rake in ever more cash while brainwashing kids to think like leftists, all with taxpayers footing the bill. Their only problem: It’s unsustainable.

And when it all comes crashing down, everyone suffers.

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Biden screws the frugal, America’s real polarization and other commentary

Libertarian: Biden Screws the Frugal

The problem with President Biden’s student-loan forgiveness “runs far beyond finances,” fumes Fiona Harrigan at Reason: Consider the “many college graduates who made strategic choices to avoid taking on debt in the first place.” Her parents “convinced me that starting my adult life that far in the hole wasn’t worth the tradeoff.” So she “quietly retired the list of schools I truly wanted to attend.” With “$35,000 annually in merit aid” and “some strategic choices, my college education never cost more than $2,000 per year.” “I never lived on campus. I took on heavy course loads and cashed in on AP credits to finish school a semester early. . . . At times, I worked three jobs to afford travel to internship and conference opportunities, as well as the nontuition costs of my education.” Now she’s “wondering which opportunities I unnecessarily gave up in the name of saving and scrimping.”

Populist: America’s Real Polarization

Obsessing about “partisan polarization” misses “the real division” now, argues Michael McKenna at The Washington Times: “the chasm between those for whom society and its institutions are working just fine and those for whom society and its institutions are either not working at all or are actively working against.” That holds not just for the Biden “student loan disaster,” which makes “the working class pay for the education of the well-off,” but also “Inflation Reduction Act” spending: “Just about all of the $380 billion . . . will wind up in the pockets of company executives, stockholders and those well-off enough to buy electric vehicles (average price now more than $66,000), cutting-edge heat pumps, solar panels.” Add the bipartisan CHIPS “legislation in which Congress gave $75 billion to semiconductor manufacturers that, combined, have made nearly $250 billion in profits in the last five years.”

Pandemic journal: No Djokovic at US Open

Novak Djokovic is “arguably the world’s greatest tennis player,” but “tennis fans won’t see him on one of its biggest stages at the U.S. Open” as the feds won’t let unvaccinated noncitizens into America, complains The Hill’s Joe Concha. “And it’s all for nothing”: Djokovic has natural immunity from 2020 and 2021 COVID bouts. And “we’re seeing triple-vaccinated people contracting coronavirus.” If it’s “about public health and safety,” “explain why Djokovic, nowhere near anyone on a court, cannot play while more than 23,000 fans fill Arthur Ashe Stadium” without “showing the same vaccination card Djokovic is required to present.”

Elex watch: DeSantis Foe Must Want To Lose

Ron DeSantis’ Democratic opponent, Rep. Charlie Crist, “seems determined to lose” Florida’s race for governor, smirks Corey DeAngelis at The Wall Street Journal: As his running mate, he chose Karla Hernández-Mats, president of Miami’s United Teachers of Dade and America Federation of Teachers veep. She and the UTD opposed school reopenings in 2020, and the AFT “successfully lobbied the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to tighten school-reopening guidelines, which kept schools elsewhere closed.” She has also “publicly disdained parents” and opposed school choice. “Crist might have learned something from Virginia, where Democrat Terry McAuliffe last year failed to regain the governorship” after saying he didn’t think parents should be telling schools what to teach.

Historian: Dems’ ‘Fascist’ Confusion

“For the Left, Donald Trump is synonymous with ‘fascism’ ” yet did Trump “illegally” nullify $300 billion” in student-loan debt to shore up his base before the midterms? asks Victor Davis Hanson at American Greatness. Or “weaponize the IRS” — sic it on Joe or Hunter Biden, amid evidence of possible corruption on the son’s laptop? “Weaponize the FBI”? Did agents’ texts discuss how to stop Biden’s election bid? Did the ex-prez order a raid on President Barack Obama or Biden’s homes? “In fact, of the last three presidents, Trump was either the most inept or indifferent, or the most obstructed” in using government agencies “for his own partisan political advantage.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board

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