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Biden called out for again extending pandemic-era pause on student loan payments: 'The eternal emergency'
Fox News contributor James Freeman slammed Biden's student loan handout, calling it 'blatantly unconstitutional' as he reverses his course on repayments
Politics
President Biden reversed his vow on student loan repayments after courts sent his handout plan to a screeching halt amid a series of legal woes.
Fox News contributor James Freeman joined "America's Newsroom" to discuss why he calls Biden's student loan handout "unconstitutional" and why he believes his timing on the pause is strategic.
"This is really, I think, the greatest abuse of this era in terms of just blatantly unconstitutional," Freeman told Mike Emanuel. "We all understand that the legislative power in this country resides in the Congress. He has to get congressional authorization to appropriate huge sums of money. He has not done that."
"He recently pretended that he had, bizarrely claiming that he had signed a bill passed by Congress," he continued. "It was a complete falsehood that's never occurred."
Back in August, Biden promised he would end the student loan repayment pause by Dec. 31, but he has since extended it through June of next year.
"Student loan payment pause is going to end," Biden said. "It's going to end December 30. I'm extending to December 31st, 2022, and it's going to end at that time. It's time for the payments to resume."
However, Freeman had his own speculation as to why the president reversed course on the repayment timeline.
"I think now, going back on his word and saying he's going to extend this payment pause is an effort to prevent a resumption of normal repayment before that court case, because I think if the resumption occurs, those judges, justices who are probably not going to like the constitutionality or lack thereof of this plan anyway, are going to see that the world does not come to an end when you tell often well-heeled borrowers in a very good job market that they have to repay their student loans," Freeman said.
"A lot of this aid is going to people who don't need it, beyond it being unconstitutional," he continued. "And I think the president doesn't want the courts to see these people being able to service their loans after all."
The Wall Street Journal editorial board dubbed the policy "Biden's eternal emergency," asking "who knows if or when borrowers will have to make payments again."
Biden announced the federal government would hand out $10,000 of student loan relief to certain borrowers earlier this year, but the move has faced challenges in the courts since.
"I think it's so important that we stop calling it cancelation or forgiveness because that's not what it is," Fox News analyst Kat Timpf said during "Outnumbered" on Wednesday. "It is forcing people who had nothing to do with the loan to pay for it, which I don't see how it's legal."
Despite the legal implications, critics suggest the initiative does not actually help those who need it most - the same group they claim to be targeting with the effort.
"The one of the sort of underreported aspects to this besides all the other problems is there were already a lot of programs in place for people with low incomes who had high debt burdens," Freeman said. "They there's a lot of forgiveness that was already available, and it was actually legal."