Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) joined Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) in introducing the Stop Reckless Student Loan Actions Act to end President Joe Biden’s attempt to unilaterally cancel student loan debt. The bill would prohibit the president from canceling student debt, stop the student loan payment pause and prevent a unilateral moratorium in the future. The cancelation and repayment changes proposed by President Biden are estimated to cost close to a trillion dollars — all without any approval from Congress. Grassley previously introduced a trio of bills to bring transparency to the opaque world of college costs and ensure students have the information they need to shop around before taking out loans.
“President Biden has said himself that the pandemic is over. There is simply no basis for using emergency-era measures as an excuse to wipe away or delay repayment on billions of dollars in student loans,” Grassley said. “Doing so is an unfair burden on those who chose not to attend college or worked hard to pay their own loans back. What’s more, it’s bad fiscal policy. Our bill would block the Biden Administration from transferring these loans from the borrower to the taxpayer.”
“Taxpayers, especially working families, should not be responsible for bearing the costs associated with President Biden’s federal student loan suspension,” Thune said. “It’s incredibly unfair to those who never incurred student debt because they didn’t attend college in the first place or because they either worked their way through school or their family pinched pennies and planned for higher education. It’s time for borrowers to resume repayment of their student loans, and I’m proud to lead this common-sense legislation that would protect taxpayers and prevent President Biden from suspending these loans in perpetuity.”
“President Biden is unfairly transferring the burden from those who willingly took on loans to those who did not,” Cassidy said. “There is no support for the man who didn’t go to college but is paying off a work truck or the woman who responsibly paid off her student loans but is struggling with her mortgage. This legislation stops Biden from sticking them with the bill for hundreds of billions of dollars.”
“It was always a clear abuse of power and deeply unfair for President Biden to ask Americans who don’t have student debt to foot the bill for those who do,” said Brent Gardner, chief government affairs officer for Americans for Prosperity. “For too long, the executive branch has accumulated unchecked emergency powers that only entrench our broken system in Washington. This bill helps restore the balance by empowering Congress to hold the president accountable for abusing emergency powers for political gain.”
“The student loan pause will cost taxpayers upwards of $195 billion while feeding inflation and providing massive windfalls to doctors, lawyers, and other high-income professionals,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “Whatever justification for the pause once existed in the depth of the pandemic has long since passed. The irresponsible stewardship of the student loan program, including multiple costly extensions of the pause, has made clear that a legislative solution is needed.”
“This legislation is common-sense reform to emergency powers that puts a gut check on the executive branch’s clear overreach of authority,” said Alex Miliken, policy and government affairs manager for the National Taxpayers Union (NTU). “The cost of President Biden’s reckless student debt policies has ballooned to the tune of more than $400 billion in hard earned tax dollars. NTU celebrates this prudent refinement of executive authority and urges its swift consideration.”
The legislation is cosponsored by Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Katie Britt (R-Ala.), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.).
The full text of the bill is available here.
