Missouri, six other states sue Biden admin over student loan plan

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against U.S. President Joe Biden, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, and the U.S. Department of Education. The suit specifically targets the Biden administration’s SAVE Plan.

What does the SAVE Plan do? The SAVE Plan seeks to forgive some borrowers’ student loans, according to information from the Department of Education’s Office of Federal Student Aid. Proponents say it eliminates accrued monthly interest on other borrowers’ student loan payments.

What does the lawsuit specifically say about the SAVE Plan? The complaint alleges that Biden is using executive action to create a policy that he could not get passed through Congress and in defiance of Supreme Court precedent calling such unilateral actions unlawful. It also cites a University of Pennsylvania estimate that the policy will cost U.S. taxpayers $475 billion over the next 10 years. That estimate is $45 billion more than the cost of the student loan forgiveness plan the Supreme Court struck down in its Biden v. Nebraska decision last year, according to the lawsuit.

Didn’t Biden just announce a bunch of new student loan forgiveness actions? The White House on Monday unveiled proposed actions that proponents say would save thousands of dollars on student loans, or cancel them entirely, for 30 million Americans. The same day, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. criticized that plan. He said the Supreme Court had already decided that similar actions taken by Biden’s administration were unconstitutional.

Dig deeper: Listen to Nick Eicher and David Bahnsen’s discussion on The World and Everything in It podcast about the realities confronting student loan cancellation plans.