Essentially, the House's push to declare an end to the years-long COVID public health emergency, may fatally undermine the Biden administration's legal argument to implement a massively controversial, student loan forgiveness plan. This is largely because the Biden administration's argument for student loan forgiveness, is based on the existence of a public health crisis.
On Monday evening, the powerful House Rules Committee will meet, to set up votes for legislation aimed at ending the COVID emergency declaration, first declared by the Trump administration in early 2020. This particular committee sets the terms for debate and voting on bills considered on the House floor.
The Biden administration has repeatedly extended the emergency status, over the past two years, and most recently earlier this month. No less than four months after President Biden publicly declared "the pandemic is over.", he renewed this emergency status again. This particular temporary provision, gives the administration certain authorities to respond to the pandemic, that it otherwise wouldn't have. All geared toward dismantling the emergency declarations extended by the Biden administration, the Rules Committee, will discuss four pieces of legislation. According to Breitbart News -
• “One bill is a resolution from Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., stating that the COVID national emergency is "hereby terminated."
• "The next bill is the Stopping Home Office Work's Unproductive Problems Act, or the SHOW UP Act, from Rep. James Comer, R-Ky. Under this measure, federal agencies would be required to assess how much the expansion of telework affected the ability of government workers to do their jobs. Agencies would also be required to insist on the return of federal employees to their offices.”
• “The third bill, the Pandemic is Over Act from Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., states the public health emergency declared by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in January 2020 is terminated.”
• “The final bill, the Freedom for Health Care Workers Act from Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., would prohibit HHS from implementing a requirement that federal health care workers must be vaccinated”
-Breitbart News
Expected to pass the House, with a Republican majority, the bills, are set to go to the floor for votes later this week.
The bills will head to the Senate, if the House passes the bills. Reportedly the Senate has already voted multiple times last year to end the COVID national emergency declaration. The vote was most recently on a bipartisan basis with 62 votes. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, then-House Speaker, did not give her caucus an opportunity to vote on the measure.
Likely to pass both the House and Senate, the legislation, will potentially force Biden, to use a veto for the first time of his presidency. Effectively, if the lawmakers declare an end to the pandemic, there would also be reverberations well beyond Congress. Essentially, congressional action to end COVID-19 emergency declarations, may prove problematic, even fatal, for Biden's ambitious student loan forgiveness program. His plans’ current survival hinges on the legal argument that COVID is an ongoing public health emergency.
In August, Biden announced that he will unilaterally cancel $10,000 of federal student loan debt for borrowers making less than $125,000 per year, and up to $20,000 for those who received Pell Grants, which support tuition for lower-income students. He described the plan, as a way to provide families-
"breathing room as they prepare to start re-paying loans after the economic crisis brought on by the pandemic."
-President Joe Biden
The Justice Department, right after Biden made his announcement, released a legal opinion stating the secretary of education has the-
"authority to reduce or eliminate the obligation to repay the principal balance of federal student loan debt, including on a class-wide basis in response to the COVID-19 pandemic."
-Biden Department of Justice
Making an identical argument, the Education Department's Office of the General Counsel, also issued a similar memo.
However, the administration's program is facing ongoing legal challenges. One such challenge, a coalition of states challenged the plan in what became Nebraska v. Biden, claiming it would deprive them of revenue.
In a Supreme Court filing in the case, the official responsible for arguing the federal government's position before the high court, made clear the Justice Department's argument for the student loan forgiveness plan is based on a public health emergency. So, clearly without a continued emergency – Biden has no plan.
The document filed in November, states-
"In March 2020, President Trump declared a national emergency in light of the COVID-19 pandemic”…"That declaration remains in effect, and the government has declared all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the territories to be disaster areas. COVID-19 has killed more than one million Americans and led to the hospitalization of millions more. COVID-19 continues to kill more than 2,000 Americans a week. The pandemic has also inflicted severe economic harms, including layoffs, spikes in inflation, rising delinquency rates on debt, and projected reductions in lifetime earnings for students who left school during the pandemic."
-Elizabeth Prelogar, DOJ Solicitor General
In an almost identical passage, to the Supreme Court filing last month, for Brown v. Department of Education. Biden’s’ DOJ wrote a case, in which two plaintiffs challenged Biden's student loan forgiveness plan, on the grounds that the administration didn't comply with federal law requiring notice and comment, in implementing certain regulatory programs. Set to be argued before the Supreme Court, on Feb. 28, are both the Brown and Nebraska cases.
The Biden administration doesn't seem to have a backup plan, if the nation's highest court strikes down Biden's student loan forgiveness plan. Bharat Ramamurti, Deputy Director of the National Economic Council, told reporters in a briefing last week.-
"Our lawyers and team are confident in the legal authority. [We're] not exploring other alternatives." [The administration's ]"not deliberating or considering any other approach,"
-Bharat Ramamurti, Deputy Director, National Economic Council
Reportedly, while Biden’s’ DOJ is trying to argue that, COVID is still a national emergency (in spite of congressional plans to the contrary), it is also is simultaneously arguing in a separate court case that COVID is no longer a public health threat. These positions are diametrically opposed. Make up your minds please gentleman, it would seem you are talking out of both sides of your mouth.
Further the Biden administration has also been seeking to end Title 42, the public health authority exercised by the Trump administration, allowing border officials to expel migrants, without allowing them to apply for asylum, to limit the spread of COVID. However, the Biden administration, in order to terminate the Trump-era immigration measure, has argued it's no longer necessary to protect public health. Again, which is it? Legally, this is highly confusing – even disturbing.
In a filing last month to the Supreme Court, the DOJ wrote-
"The government recognizes that the end of the Title 42 orders will likely lead to disruption and a temporary increase in unlawful border crossings," …"The government in no way seeks to minimize the seriousness of that problem. But the solution to that immigration problem cannot be to extend indefinitely a public-health measure that all now acknowledge has outlived its public-health justification."
-Elizabeth Prelogar, DOJ Solicitor General
The Supreme Court, last month, despite the administration's efforts, ordered that the measure remain in place, during a legal challenge over its fate, being waged between the federal government and several states, including Arizona. The Supreme Court is set to hear Arizona, et al. v Mayorkas next month.
If Congress votes to end the COVID emergency declaration, it's unclear how the administration will address the seemingly contradictory legal arguments, that it has laid before the Supreme Court, next month. In fact, the idea that they oppose themselves in their arguments would almost be humorous, if it were not so sad, in that, they are trying separately to play the ends against the middle to achieve an end outside the law.
To approach this subject with such ambiguity, lends a definite understanding of the vast twisting of the facts and their proposed, unfounded plans, to gain a way to make Biden’s plans work – even if they have to twist the arm of the Supreme Court to do so. The deceitful way in which this president and his administration carries on, hoping to use the law to their advantage, is reprehensible.
“It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.”
-Noël Coward