This week the Supreme Court is hearing arguments about Joe Biden’s school loan bailout scheme, one of the most blatantly cynical and consequential attacks on the Constitution’s separation of powers in memory.
The first question we need to ask is: what use is an “originalist” court if it allows the executive branch to flagrantly ignore one of the clearest and most fundamental instructions of American governance? Article I, Section 9, says, “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law”—and there is no exemption for “instances where a president wants to unilaterally spend upwards of a trillion dollars to give some favored voting group a break.”
Of course, it’s imperative to stress that Biden isn’t really “forgiving”—or “canceling” or “giving relief,” or any other euphemisms used to describe this plan—anything. This is existing debt, money that’s been lent and spent by the borrowers on services. It isn’t cancelable.
Biden has issued an edict that breaks existing contracts by fiat and transfers the responsibility of paying those loans from a bunch of relatively well-heeled Americans to other taxpayers—most of whom have either paid off their loans, avoided taking student loans, or never wanted them.
But it’s worse than all that.
Democrats, editorial boards, reporters, bureaucrats, the presidential administration: they all know it’s unconstitutional. The rickety justification for the loan plan rests on the post-9/11 HEROES Act, which empowers the president to make temporary changes when “necessary in connection with a war or other
