Senate votes to undo Biden’s student loan relief: What happens now?
The Senate has voted to block President Biden’s program to forgive billions of dollars in student loans. The measure is now headed for the president’s desk.
The Senate has voted 52-46 to block President Biden’s student debt relief program, which aims to cancel billions of dollars in loans.
The senators voted mostly along party lines except for Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana, who along with independent Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona joined the Republicans in passing the bill to undo Biden’s plan.
The resolution would quash the government’s program to forgive either $10,000 or $20,000 in loans of tens of millions of students.
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President Biden vows to veto resolution
The legislation is now set to land on the president’s desk, but the White House had announced in a statement that he would veto the measure.
The Statement of Administration Policy says that the resolution is “an unprecedented attempt to undercut our historic economic recovery and would deprive more than 40 million hard-working Americans of much-needed student debt relief,” which is why the president would overrule it.
If this happens, it is not very likely that the House and the Senate would be able to muster enough votes to countermand a presidential veto.
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Supreme Court set to rule on student loan forgiveness plan
However, the Biden administration is not only dealing with Congress. The Supreme Court is yet to rule on whether the program will be allowed to proceed. A group of six states and two borrowers from Texas are asking the high court to nullify the debt forgiveness plan.
Because of these legal challenges, the Department of Education is no longer accepting applications for the relief, and loan service providers have been unable to give out any funds.
The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling on these cases this month.