President Joe Biden held a press event to brag about a major accomplishment this week. That itself is hardly surprising in an election year, but the boast itself was rather curious. In announcing the writing off of another $1.2 billion owed to the government in student loans, Biden gloated that the Supreme Court could not stop him from acting unilaterally to cancel the debt.
For an Administration running on saving democracy from his political opponent, the chest-thumping brag that no one can stop him was a moment of impressive political dissonance.
Biden spoke at the Julian Dixon Library in Culver City, California and noted that his effort to cancel billions in debt was initially halted by the Supreme Court. It has also been opposed by many in Congress and polls show that the public is split on the idea with 47 percent in favor and 41 percent opposed. It is doubtful that the plan could ever make it through Congress.
So Biden, again, acted alone to write off a massive amount of debt owed to the public.
“Early in my term, I announced a major plan to provide millions of working families with debt relief for their college student debt. Tens of millions of people in debt were literally about to be canceled in debts. But my MAGA Republican friends in the Congress, elected officials and special interests stepped in and sued us. And the Supreme Court blocked it. But that didn’t stop me.”
Bragging that the courts cannot stop you is hardly a testament to the democratic process.
Biden has been found to have violated the Constitution with impunity in the past. This includes rulings that his administration has exceeded his authority and engaged in racial discrimination in federal programs. Indeed, Biden has often displayed a cavalier attitude toward such violations.
For example, the Biden administration was found to have violated the Constitution in its imposition of a nationwide eviction moratorium through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Biden admitted that his White House counsel and most legal experts told him the move was unconstitutional. But he ignored their advice and went with that of Harvard University Professor Laurence Tribe, the one person who would tell him what he wanted to hear. It was, of course, then quickly found to be unconstitutional.
Biden showed the same disregard over the unconstitutionality of his effort to unilaterally forgive roughly half a trillion dollars in student debt.
Recently, Biden blasted Trump for saying that he would be a dictator on the first day in taking unilateral action to close the border. (Trump later said it was a joke, but that he was promising immediate and decisive action on the border on his first day back in office).
Biden warned donors “he’s saying it out loud.” The irony is crushing since Biden has been repeatedly found to have violated the Constitution through similar unilateral actions using executive action. He is now bragging that not even the Supreme Court can prevent him from doing so on student debt.
The President is running on his claim that “democracy is on the ballot.” Yet, the no-one-can-stop-me boast makes him seem like the source and not the solution of the problem.
