[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 119 (Wednesday, July 12, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Page S2332]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           U.S. SUPREME COURT

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, on another matter, last month, the 
Supreme Court included in its most consequential rulings of the term a 
major blow to the Biden administration's sprawling conception of 
executive branch power.
  For years, the administration grasped for a way to deliver a big dose 
of catnip to Washington Democrats' wealthy blue-State base in the form 
of student loan socialism. They had dreamed up a reverse Robin Hood 
system of taking from working families to pay off the student loans of 
highly educated professionals, moving hundreds of billions of dollars 
in outstanding debt from high-earning doctors and lawyers onto the 
taxpayers' tab.
  The median college graduate earns 55 percent more than the median 
worker who holds a high school diploma. And the wealthiest households 
in the country owe a disproportionate share of America's student debt.
  But Democrats are hellbent on forgiving that debt at the expense of 
folks who carefully saved, paid off their debt, or avoided it 
altogether.
  Of all the ways Washington Democrats have dreamed up to waste 
taxpayer dollars and betray the trust of working Americans, this one 
may well have taken the cake. But when the Biden administration picked 
an especially outlandish deal for enacting this particular scheme, the 
Supreme Court ended up being involved.
  Just a couple of weeks ago, the Court ruled that 20-year-old 
emergency authorities designed during the War on Terror did not permit 
the President to ignore Congress and unilaterally cancel debt from his 
party's most reliable supporters.
  As Chief Justice Roberts put it in the opinion of the Court, the 
administration's plan `` `modified' the cited provisions'' of existing 
authorities ``only in the same sense that the French Revolution 
`modified' the status of the French nobility.''
  Washington Democrats tried to serve working families a raw deal. And 
by all accounts, they will probably try it again. But Senate 
Republicans continue to stand against radical student loan socialism--
in whatever form it may take.

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