We are seeing a very dangerous precedent right now with the court case to undo student loan forgiveness. There are three main parts to this case that are very critical:
- Laws don’t have to help everyone equally. Medicare for All is basically the only policy in that basket.
- Bailouts are part of the American fabric.
- The courts are nullifying clearly established law.
Equal access problems
So for the first part, if everything has to apply to everyone equally, then hurricane relief in Florida is unconstitutional. Federal subsidies for gas exploration in Texas are unconstitutional. Federal subsidies which prevent the South from falling into complete misery are unconstitutional. Federal subsidies which clean up coal mines in Kentucky and West Virginia are unconstitutional. They don’t impact me, so they are unconstitutional based on this Supreme Court’s logic.
Federal laws don’t have to apply equally to every person or every county in order to be constitutional. That has never been the case and is complete legal bogus. I doubt the Supreme Court will apply this new legal doctrine to all of these programs which benefit Republican states. That makes it not a doctrine but just an activist Supreme Court.
Unethical bailout argument
The whole argument that everyone needs to pull their own weight is antithetical to one of the main reasons our Constitution was written in the first place. By being together in one country we are able to pull each other up in times of need, and this has been the core of American democracy since 1787. This means that reconstruction would be unconstitutional under this argument. The Tennessee Valley Authority is now unconstitutional. FEMA is now unconstitutional and Florida now needs to be self-reliant and stop taking Federal aid when they get hit by hurricanes. If New Orleans is getting flooded than either Louisiana gets to pay to rebuild the dikes or rebuild New Orleans somewhere else. Same goes for Houston. These states need to stop taking Federal Aid because they don’t build their cities in ways which are resiliant to hurricanes if they are so opposed to bailouts. What about the PPP forgiveness program which gave billions of dollars to mostly rich bankers who then gambled the money on wall street? All of these programs are unconstitutional under the unethical bailout argument.
The pure hypocrisy of this one is just amazing. The Supreme Court has never before had any problem with giving a bailout to anyone. But as soon as it is student loan forgiveness, a program which is far more progressive than most of the other bailouts we have seen over the last decade they are up in arms about “ethics”.
Nullification
Congress spent this money, and they clearly put in a section of the law clearly stating that student loan forgiveness is legal.
The Supreme Court is nullifying a section of the US Code without any clear argument about why it violates the Constitution. Any section which they say violates this section will likely be just as easily used to nullify PPP loan forgiveness or FEMA saving Florida yet again the next time a hurricane hits. Student loan forgiveness is constitutional, which is why the Supreme Court shouldn’t make this ridiculous argument without opening up a massive can of worms about the supreme court’s legitimacy. If the Supreme Court can just strike down any law without any merit or real argument, it has become the most powerful branch of government, unaccountable, and dangerous.
What it really comes down to is the Republican Party is unable to win a majority of the vote in the modern American party system. They are legislating from the bench because that’s all they can do.