Republican lawmakers are calling on President Joe Biden’s administration to withdraw its plan to waive $147 billion of student loan debt, arguing that it would be too costly for taxpayers.
The lawmakers, led by Senator John Kennedy, Senator Bill Cassidy and Representative Virginia Foxx, released a statement urging the Department of Education to withdraw the rule.
They said that the move would bring the total debt transferred to American taxpayers to around $1 trillion.
The proposed rule, published in April, seeks to amend the Higher Education Act of 1965, and would enable the provision of targeted debt relief.
“The Biden administration describes this regulation as ‘targeted relief,’ yet the department’s own estimates show the opposite,” the lawmakers said in the statement.
“This is even broader than the department’s first attempt: at an estimated price tag of $147 billion, taxpayers are being forced to take on the debt of nearly 28 million borrowers.”
Newsweek has reached out to the Department of Education via email.
The Republican letter was signed by 40 senators and more than 90 members of the House of Representatives.
The lawmakers described the move as a “backdoor attempt to enact ‘free’ college” and said it was “fiscally irresponsible.”
They further claimed that the proposed actions are illegal, referencing a 2023 Supreme Court ruling which said that Biden did not have the authority to cancel student debt for millions of Americans.
“The administration continues to use borrowers as political pawns, knowing full well these proposed actions are illegal. The Supreme Court [made] it abundantly clear that there is zero authority to write-off federal student loans en masse last June when the department’s ‘Plan A’ was ruled unconstitutional,” the statement said.
Despite the Supreme Court ruling, Biden has continued to look for ways to deliver student debt relief, which was a key campaign pledge.
In total, nearly $160 billion in student loan debt for about 4.6 million borrowers has been forgiven under Biden.
The Republican letter further criticized the Biden administration for focusing on trying to cancel student loans instead of making the Free Application for Federal Student Aid available to prospective college students.
President Joe Biden at Madison Area Technical College in Madison, Wisconsin, April 8, 2024. Republican lawmakers oppose a Biden administration plan to waive $147 billion of student loan debt.
ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images
The Republican lawmakers urged the Biden administration to work with Congress to solve “the higher education financing crisis.”
Around 43 million Americans hold federal student loan debt with a total national balance of over $1.6 trillion as of 2023, according to the Department of Education.
U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona has said that the Biden administration is “unapologetically fixing a broken student loan system.”
Republican-led states have resisted the president’s administration’s student loan repayment plans, with some even filing a federal lawsuit in April challenging Biden’s SAVE Plan.
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