(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) After President Joe Biden spent a day boasting that Democrats weren’t completely taken to the cleaners in Tuesday’s midterm elections, a federal judge delivered a roundhouse kick to the regime’s gut.
U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman of Texas on Thursday ruled that Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan is an illegal “unconstitutional exercise of Congress’s legislative power and must be vacated.”
The debt-redistribution scheme, with a price tag upwards of $400 billion, would cancel up to $10,000 of student debt for individuals who earn less than $125,000 per year, or less than $250,000 for married couples.
Pittman’s ruling to shut down the program was made in response to a lawsuit filed by the Job Creators Network Foundation, which alleged that Biden’s bailout violated federal procedures.
“Whether the Program constitutes good public policy is not the role of this Court to determine,” wrote Pittman, a Trump-appointee.
“Still, no one can plausibly deny that it is either one of the largest delegations of legislative power to the executive branch, or one of the largest exercises of legislative power without congressional authority in the history of the United States.”
Congress did not give Biden’s executive branch clear authorization to undertake its student loan forgiveness plan, Pittman ruled, which probably came as a surprise to the potted petunia-in-chief, who last month claimed Congress had passed his edict by “a vote or two.”
BIDEN on his student loan debt bailout: "It's passed. I got it passed by a vote or two."
What is he talking about? Congress never voted on it. pic.twitter.com/62Ov7znOfZ
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 23, 2022
“In this country, we are not ruled by an all-powerful executive with a pen and a phone,” Pittman advised in his ruling striking down the plan Congress never approved.
“Instead, we are ruled by a Constitution that provides for three distinct and independent branches of government,” Pittman wrote.
“Good to know we have federal judges with the brains and backbones to check government overreach,” said Mike Davis, former chief counsel for nominations, U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary.
Cheers to U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman (N.D. Tex.) for striking down President Biden’s unconstitutional $400 billion student-loan forgiveness program.
Good to know we have federal judges with the brains and backbones to check government overreach.https://t.co/tpoyQPyoP5 pic.twitter.com/062FSUwUX9
— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) November 11, 2022
The judge’s ruling concluded that, “The Court is not blind to the current political division in our country. But it is fundamental to the survival of our Republic that the separation of powers as outlined in our Constitution be preserved.”
The Biden administration said it will appeal the ruling, and has not indicated if it will continue accepting loan forgiveness applications.
