Good Thursday evening. This is Daniel Allott with The Hill's Top Opinions.
When student loan repayments were first paused in March 2020, most Americans thought the idea was reasonable. Many businesses and schools had closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and so millions of Americans weren't receiving a paycheck.
But each subsequent extension of the pause, writes Heritage Foundation Visiting Fellow ADAM KISSEL, "has been less and less reasonable." And with its latest delay, "the Biden administration has clearly lost the thread."
The administration doesn't even try to argue that the continued loan repayment moratorium is tied to the pandemic (a pandemic, it should be noted, that President Biden has declared "over.").
Instead, Kissel writes, "it is based largely on financial difficulties that predate the pandemic, such as borrowers taking on high amounts of debt in relation to expected income from a college degree."
The administration justified its latest delay as a way of "'alleviat[ing] uncertainty for borrowers' while the administration asks the Supreme Court to lift the injunction against the student loan bailout."
With this new justification, loan debt repayment delays could extend indefinitely, because litigation over the student loan forgiveness could take years to resolve.
"What's different this time is that not only is the bailout illegal, but now even the student loan pause is probably illegal," writes Kissel, who is a former deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs at the U.S. Department of Education.
But there might not be much that can be done about it. "[I]t's virtually impossible for taxpayers to gain standing in court and sue to put an end to the administration's extravagant largesse" — estimated to be $8.5 billion per month.
For those worried about government spending and the moral hazard of canceling student loan debt, Kissel sees the new House of Representatives as the only hope.
Kissel hopes that come January, the GOP-led House "asserts its lawmaking prerogative and sues the Department of Education over this abuse."
Read Kissel's op-ed here.
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