Thank God for U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman. Someone with an iota of common sense has stopped Joe Biden’s attempted end-run around Congress.
With the 2022 mid-terms dominating the headlines, many of us missed the news of Hizzoner squashing Biden’s illegal and unconstitutional attempt to have the taxpayers assume the debt of would-be doctors and lawyers.
After being nominated by President Trump, then approved by the US Senate, Judge Pittman of the Northern District of Texas has brought to an end Biden’s supposed “College debt relief” scheme.
The best part is the low-key way the White House raised the white flag of surrender.
As reported by CBS News (emphasis mine);
The Biden administration has stopped taking applications for its student debt forgiveness program, citing a Thursday ruling from a federal judge in Texas that declared the program “unlawful.”
On Friday, the Department of Education’s student debt relief website displayed a message informing borrowers that “student loan debt relief is blocked.” It added, “Courts have issued orders blocking our student debt relief program. As a result, at this time, we are not accepting applications. We are seeking to overturn those orders.”
The Education Department said it will hold the applications for the roughly 26 million people who have already applied for forgiveness.
The Texas ruling “vacates the entire program, so they can’t have borrowers continue to apply,” noted higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz, who said he estimates there are about 38 million people eligible for the debt relief program. “For the 12 million who haven’t yet submitted applications, they can’t submit applications now.”
The ruling from U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, was in response to a lawsuit from a conservative group called the Job Creators Network Foundation, which argued the Biden administration violated federal procedures by failing to seek public input on the program.
Pittman declared the program “unlawful,” citing the 2002 Higher Education Relief Opportunities For Students Act (HEROES), which gives the Education Department the ability to grant waivers to financial aid recipients.
Just in case Slow Joe forgot about the US Constitution, it’s the Congress that controls the purse strings, not the Executive Branch.
