In a 6-3 decision, the court’s conservative majority rejected President Biden’s plan to cancel more than $400 billion in student loan debt for millions of borrowers. It would have been one of the most expensive executive actions in U.S. history.
we didn't decide anything, the mechanism the elite put into our government to prevent true democracy once again worked for them and against us. Just like the Citizen's United case.
Judical branch is in place to protect the rights of the few and Constitution so it plays a role. The issue is that the justices defend the powerful rather then thepeoples.
That was Congress approved though. Blame Congress. POTUS doesn't have forgiveness powers. He has military and nuclear powers. Make he can nuke the bank computers?
The SCOTUS is illegitimate at this point. Prepare for years of terrible decisions. Or, do what I'm doing. Expatriate. This shit's beyond saving during this lifetime.
It's been years of terrible decisions. They've been trying to build this Scotus config since Nixon and Reagan years, now they have it and everything people have been making fun of me for saying for 20+ years is happening. Ugh.
It's not much better in other places. Lots of us rely on being "better than the us" so as it slides, so do we, just a few meters behind.
Politicians need to actually feel concerned about how the people they are hurting will respond. Currently they know there will be nothing more than a few grouchy news articles and upset social media comments.
Biden just said how he's against that because that would be politicizing the supreme court.
Thing is, you can't win by playing by the rules when your opponent is constantly cheating.
The supreme court has clearly ALREADY become politicized, it can't get that much worse than rich white guys buying a black justice to do their bidding, now can it?
somehow every kind of bank, business, and rich person can get tax breaks, and bail outs yet average middle class people can't get some help on their student loans.
This is a terrible precedent. Some federal action might affect a company which might pay the state taxes at some point so the states get to sue now? That could apply to nearly anything the federal government does! This is a terrible ruling for so many reasons. Naked partisan hackery by the conservative judges. The court needs reform badly.
IIRC the special thing about student loans in the US is that you cannot default out of them.
So even if I go through bankruptcy, I will still owe this specific debt.
The obvious fix would be to deny student loans this special treatment.
I could imagine that this would also have a positive effect on the cost of tuition in the US, as the collection of these stupidly high debts would be far from guaranteed.
The obvouis fix would be to deny student loans this special treatment.
Unfortunately we're not going to get this anytime soon. The Republicans are against it, and Biden was the one who introduced the bill making student loans work this way.
Had a feeling this would happen unfortunately. I have a lot of student loans for my graduate degree and even if they would put the interest rate at something reasonable that would be so much better than the rates that are currently set
Disappointed, but it makes sense that decisions with such huge implications should be clearly made by the legislative branch, not just at the whim of some executive department.
It does have bipartisan support, this is repeatedly shown in polling. But it doesn't matter what voters want. The interests of capital will be served above all else because of decades of antidemocratic moves.
Antidemocratic moves like
Legalized bribes that push politicians towards the interests of capital.
Gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the electoral college which all reduce progressive and leftist voices to the point where we need massively more votes than right wingers to get the same power.
Filibuster power that firmly cements the status quo by requiring the majority of bills get a supermajority vote to pass.
Democrats being unwilling to wield their power to revoke the filibuster and enact their legislative agenda
The rotating villian democrats always seem to have have who can spoil anything even close to progress by one or two votes (Manchin and Sinema for now)
The US is just an oligarchy at this point and it's getting harder and harder for me to stay optimistic about getting out of it.
It's kind of funny how dumb the democrats are. If they said: "give us Congress and the presidency next cycle and we'll pass this as a law" .. they likely easily win.
But nope they won't say that, they won't do that... Just plain stupid of them.
The democrat party and those in it are really bad strategists. And they're really bad at messaging. They don't fight back against republican shenanigans, they don't know how to push policy, and they waste opportunities so often.
Biden could have packed the court, like trump did, with Democrats (because apparently the supreme court is a blatantly partisan institution now). But he won't.
I'm a democrat, but I'm always disappointed by democrat leaders and their decisions.
this is the kind of US-centric topic I don't want to see on main. a tragic story, yes, but not relevant to the instance, lemmy, or the fediverse as a whole, sorry.
But it's not more affordable education? It's just funneling federal dollars into the education industry, which is such blatant corruption I don't get why anyone was ever for it. If you want to make education more affordable then start by.. reducing the cost of education?
That’s the thing: Congress provided for waiving and modifying student debt in at least two laws. Biden based this action off the HEROES Act of 2003. There is also broad authority to do so in the Higher Education Act of 1965.
Not sure why the HEROES Act was used this time around, but Congress provided for debt forgiveness nonetheless.
Not sure what the “horrible precedent” is with acknowledging that.
Agree and disagree. They put the cart before the horse on this one for sure. If we solve the problem of unaffordable education, then we can talk about forgiving the student loans of people who didn't get to benefit from the new system
Just forgiving the student loans of a seemingly random block of people makes no sense. The next generation and more importly the universities will expect us to do the same thing later. Guess what that means?
Schools will raise their prices even more and kids will take on even more debt. We can't just slap a bandaid on this and pat ourselves on the back
yeah, not sure how unaffordable education gets fixed though... or if it should even get fixed - higher education has historically been for those that could afford it. prior to the interwar years (between WW1 and WW2), very few people actually attended college. over time, college became just one more step in the natural order of things, even if it was not a financially viable decision.
so here we are, where a large percentage of the population enters themselves into multi-decade debt because it's expected of them, or because some occupations require significant investment into higher education (even if the person is unqualified to obtain that position - with or without education)
should the government hand colleges a blank check so people avoid debt? I dont see that passing through Congress. should the government step in and tell private educational systems how much they can charge? I dont see that happening, ever.