Georgia AG joins lawsuit against Biden administration’s latest student loan plan

ATLANTA — Joining six other states’ attorneys general, Georgia AG Chris Carr is suing President Joe Biden’s administration over the latest White House attempt to provide student loan relief to borrowers across the United States.

In a statement from the AG’s office, Carr said the “lawless student loan plan” would cost American taxpayers about $475 billion.

“Despite the Court having already settled this issue, the Biden administration continues to brazenly violate the law,” Carr said. “Georgia taxpayers have made it clear that they know it’s wrong to be forced to pay off other people’s student loans, particularly those with the highest earning potential. This is election-year politics and an egregious example of federal overreach, and we’re fighting back yet again.”

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A previous plan aimed at canceling or reducing large volumes of student debt was stopped last year by the U.S. Supreme Court, which the lawsuit by the the seven states says would have cost $430 billion.

The ruling in the Supreme Court said Biden’s repayment plan at the time could not proceed due to its impact on the federal budget without Congressional approval.

“In striking down that attempt, the Court declared that the President cannot ‘unilaterally alter large sections of the American economy.’ Undeterred, the President is at it again, even bragging that ‘the Supreme Court blocked it. They blocked it. But that didn’t stop me,’” the statement from Carr’s office said.

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The U.S. system of checks and balances notably provides Congress with the “power of the purse,” rather than leaving it fully in the hands of the Executive Branch, which the Office of the President of the United States sits atop.

Carr, as Georgia AG, joined the suit alongside attorneys general of Arkansas, Florida, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio and Oklahoma.

The lawsuit by the seven states continues, saying “Yet again, the President is unilaterally trying to impose an extraordinarily expensive and controversial policy that he could not get through Congress. This latest attempt to sidestep the Constitution is only the most recent instance in a long but troubling pattern of the President relying on innocuous language from decades-old statutes to impose drastic, costly policy changes on the American people without their consent.”

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