President Biden vetoed the Republican-led resolution that would have killed his student debt relief plan.
Video of President Biden:
Congressional Republicans led an effort to pass a bill blocking my administration’s plan to provide up to $20,000 in student debt relief to working and middle class Americans.
I will not back down to help hard working people.
That is why I veto this bill. pic.twitter.com/ZeYEm4LOjz
— President Biden (@POTUS) June 7, 2023
Biden sent a veto message to the House of Representatives:
I hereby return without my HJ Res approval. 45, a resolution that would disapprove of the Department of Education’s rule on “Federal Student Loan Waivers and Modifications.”
Since day one, my administration has fought to make college cheaper and the student loan system more manageable for borrowers. My administration has championed the largest Pell grant increase in the past decade – a combined $900 increase in the maximum student grant over the past 2 years – and plans to double the maximum Pell grant by 2029 at nearly $13,000. This means more money in students’ pockets to pay for their college education. To help people who have had to borrow to go to university, my administration has put in place a system of student loans that works. The Ministry of Education has proposed the most generous repayment plan ever, which will cut undergraduate loan repayments in half. He also reformed the civil service loan forgiveness program to make it easier for hundreds of thousands of civil service workers to get the debt relief they deserve.
The pandemic has been devastating for families across the country. To give borrowers the essential relief they need as they recover from the economic strains associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ministry of Education has created a program to provide up to $10,000 in relief. debt – and up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients – reaching over 40 million hard-working Americans. Nearly 90% of that relief would go to Americans earning less than $75,000 a year, and none of the relief would go to an individual or household in the top 5%.
The demand for this relief is undeniable. In less than 4 weeks – during the time the application for student debt relief was available – 26 million people applied or were automatically found eligible for relief. At least 16 million of these borrowers could already have received debt relief had it not been for the baseless lawsuits filed by opponents of the program.
The action of the Department of Education is based on decades-old authority granted by Congress. Several administrations over the past two decades have used this authority, following the same procedures as my administration, to protect borrowers from the effects of national emergencies and military deployments. The exercise of this authority by the Department of Education has never been subject to the law of congressional scrutiny.
It is a disgrace to working families across the country that lawmakers continue to pursue this unprecedented attempt to deny critical aid to millions of their own constituents, even as many of those same lawmakers have seen dozens of thousands of dollars of their own commercial loans canceled by the federal government.
I remain committed to continuing to make college affordable and to providing this essential relief to borrowers as they struggle to recover from a once-in-a-century pandemic.
Therefore, I veto this resolution.
President Biden continues to fight for debt relief for student borrowers. The only reason the bill passed the Senate was because a few Democratic senators like Manchin and Tester as well as Independent Sinema joined the Republicans.
The House and Senate don’t have the votes to override President Biden’s veto, so the president’s student loan forgiveness plan will live to see another day, and young voters will remember that Joe Biden swore off. is beaten for them as they voted in 2024.
