President Joe Biden has taken his old boss, Barack Obama’s motto, “I’ve got a pen and a phone” to a new level.
Biden has legislated via executive fiat more than any President in four decades.
And now the President is hoping the Supreme Court of the United States will keep his favorite executive order alive.
Biden’s pen and phone
“I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone – and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward.”
Those were the words from Barack Obama when he was tired of a then-Republican controlled legislature not passing the legislation he wanted.
Obama’s former Vice President, Joe Biden, is actually outpacing his former boss when it comes to executive orders.
In his first week in the Oval Office, President Biden issued 22 executive orders.
By comparison, and as a frame of reference, former President Trump issued four his first week.
In Biden’s first full year in office, he signed 60 executive orders into law.
You have to go all the way back to the Jimmy Carter Administration to find a President with a higher yearly average.
Biden’s student loan bailout
One President Biden’s biggest overreach of executive power came from, perhaps, his signature policy in his time in the Oval Office.
In August, Biden – with a stroke of the pen – wiped several hundreds of billions of dollars off the books without the consent of Congress.
Through an executive order the President tried to initiate one of the largest transfers of wealth in world history.
In doing so, he would’ve stolen upwards of a trillion-dollars from American workers who didn’t go to college, or who had sacrificed and worked hard to pay off their student debt – and handed it on a silver platter to partying college students and grads with useless degrees who had no intentions of paying off their obligations.
The President of the United States does have the power to pause student loan payments, as Biden has done since he first stepped foot in the Oval Office – however, canceling loans would effectively be a budgetary move, requiring an act of Congress.
Take it from Nancy Pelosi from last year.
“People think that the President of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness,” Speaker Pelosi said about a year before Biden’s historic abuse of power. “He does not. He can postpone. He can delay. But he does not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress.”
Judge deems program unconstitutional
And that’s why Biden’s unprecedented attempt to purchase votes ahead of the 2022 Midterms is being challenged in the courts.
One of those challenges came up in the U.S. District Court in north Texas.
Federal judge Mark Pittman blocked Biden’s executive order, calling it “illegal” in his 26-page decision.
NEWS: Federal judge in Texas strikes down Biden's student debt relief program, declaring it illegal. pic.twitter.com/02Doi3CXwC
— Michael Stratford (@mstratford) November 10, 2022
In his ruling, Pittman called Biden’s $10,000-$20,000 handout to his voter base, “unconstitutional.”
But the Biden Administration was just handed another courthouse setback.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, also based in Texas, declined to revive President Joe Biden’s student debt-relief program while lawsuits proceed.
Taking it to the highest court
Biden’s Justice Department requested the Supreme Court of the United States step in and allow Biden’s student loan bailout to continue while court wranglings are figured out.
And the White House now has its answer.
SCOTUS has decided it will indeed hear the White House’s appeal to Pittman’s ruling blocking the Biden Administration’s student loan bailout.
The High Court will hear the case in February.
And now they’ve also declared they will hear a second case revolving around the student loan boondoggle.
The Epoch Times is reporting the challenge has been brought by two individual borrowers who are not qualified for full debt relief forgiveness.
The plaintiffs say they were denied an opportunity to comment on the Education Secretary’s decision to provide targeted student loan debt relief to some and not others.
The Court could consolidate the two cases into one, or hear them separately.
SCOTUS is currently made up of six justices nominated by Republican Presidents – three of whom were put on the bench by then-President Donald Trump – and three justices appointed by Democrats.
The Biden Administration has temporarily paused applications for student loan handouts.
In the meantime, Biden has once again allowed borrowers to defer payments penalty-free.
Grads won’t be forced to make a student loan payment until the end of next June at the earliest.
So far during his Presidency, Biden has not once asked students to make a single student loan payment.
