Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues The Biden Administration Biden to Cancel $10,000 in Student Loan Debt

via CNN.com

Yesterday, a lawsuit was filed in federal court to block the Biden administration's plan to forgive $10,000 in federal student loan debt for folks with qualifying loans and income of less than $120,000 a year. The plan also offers an additional $10,000 in loan forgiveness to folks who received Pell grants, to target borrowers who were more likely to come from low-income families.

The lawsuit was filed by a dude named Frank Garrison who works for the Pacific Legal Foundation, an outfit described by CNN as a "a nonprofit libertarian law firm," and which is handling the lawsuit on Garrison's behalf. The Washington Post similarly describes the foundation as "a conservative public interest law firm in California."

As Judd Legum from the Popular Information website points out:


As Legum also points out, Garrison's lawsuit against loan forgiveness faces a few hurdles, mainly because to have standing to sue, the plaintiff needs to show not just that they think a government action is bad and wrong and will sap the vitality of the American people's precious bodily fluids, they also have to show that they have been harmed by the policy, which is a big ask when you're talking about a plan to relieve people's student debts. How is someone else getting up to $20,000 damaging to this Frank Garrison fellow?

The lawsuit claims, however, that Garrison will be harmed by having $20,000 of his own debt forgiven. The American Rescue Plan exempted any future federal loan forgiveness from federal taxes. But apparently coming out $19,000 ahead, in Indiana, would be a great injury to this Garrison fella.

White House Assistant Press Secretary Abdullah Hassan called the claim "baseless" because the program won't oblige anyone to accept loan forgiveness if they'd rather have their debt.

Also this Garrison dude, filed the lawsuit as a Indiana resident. Indiana is one of the few states that would tax student loan forgiveness provided by Biden's program as state income tax. The "problem" is that this dude's Linkedin page says he's a resident of DC.

A conniving lying Rwinger is trying to harm the middle-class and the poor by getting rid fo this benefit - and Garrison's employer is forum-shopping because it worked (for the most part) for the criminal orange clown with respect to Judge Cannon - it will become a component of the Rwing playbook in the future. So what else is new?

This is a reminder that conservatives would rather see poor folks get evicted and/or get saddled with debt than see big businesses have to sacrifice profit for the public good.