House Votes to Oppose Student Loan Plan

House Republicans on Thursday led the votes against a Biden administration student loan repayment option allowing loan forgiveness based on family size and income and allowing loan forgiveness for borrowers earning less than $15 an hour.

The joint resolution, passed under the Congressional Review Act, was approved by a 210-189 vote, including yes votes from two Democrats, after the White House said earlier this week it would veto the measure if passed, reported Roll Call.

“This new regulation, ironically dubbed the SAVE plan, is the most expensive regulation in our nation’s history, and is a backdoor attempt to ram the administration’s socialist free college fantasy down the throats of hard-working taxpayers,” Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., argued on the House floor before the vote.

“Not only does this plan shift the cost of loans from the borrower, the person who actually took out the loan, it shifts the cost to the person who never took the loan out, to begin with, the taxpayer … but it also will make college more expensive.”

The Biden administration said that requiring more borrowers to make larger payments on federal student loans will put the nation’s “record economic recovery at risk” by reducing consumer spending if borrowers had to return to repaying their loans after a three-year pause started during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It would be particularly harmful for low- and middle-income borrowers, community college students, and borrowers who work in public service,” the Office of Management and Budget said Monday in a Statement of Administration Policy, which also said Biden will veto the House measure.

The Senate, meanwhile, rejected a companion bill to the House resolution before Thanksgiving by a 49-50 vote. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., did not vote, but even if he had, Vice President Kamala Harris would not have voted to break a tie on a resolution the White House opposes.

However, before the Supreme Court ruled in June against Biden’s call to cancel $400 billion in student loan debt, the Senate sent him a different House-created measure to block student loan forgiveness.

Biden vetoed the plan and the House did not get the two-thirds majority vote to override him.

The administration also announced Wednesday that its work to allow relief to student loan borrowers had topped $4.8 billion, with the Education Department saying $2.6 billion in debt was forgiven for people working in private sector jobs and $2.2 billion from efforts undertaken to make the income-driven repayment program work in better ways.

“We know there are so many more student loan borrowers who’ve been failed by this broken system and still need our help. We’re working really hard to fix the system, but we know that there’s so many that still need help,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said. “We have no intention of slowing down. Our regulatory effort to deliver much-needed relief to an even greater number of borrowers is moving forward.”

Biden, echoing Cardona, said that from the first day of his administration, he vowed to improve the nation’s student loan system to provide Americans with “opportunity and prosperity — not unmanageable burdens of student loan debt.”