Nebraska senators pan Biden’s student loan payment pause extension

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) — Nebraska’s senators are at odds with President Joe Biden’s decision to extend the pause on student loan payments.

Sen. Ben Sasse, who will leave the Senate next year to become the University of Florida’s next president, believes the program forces low-income Americans to pay for degrees earned by postgraduates.

“Reasonable people might differ about the policy — in my view, it’s flatly unjust to transfer poorer Americans’ earnings to fund richer folks’ graduate degrees — but that’s not even the core problem here: Congress didn’t approve this scheme, and the President doesn’t have the power to do this alone,” Sasse said in a press release. “Courts have spoken but the President is deciding to flagrantly ignore them. This isn’t how self-government works.”

SEE ALSO: Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse would make $1 million annually as UF president

In a tweet, Sen. Deb Fischer shared the sentiment of her colleague, calling the program unfair and unconstitutional.

President Biden’s student loan games are not only unfair – they’re unconstitutional.

This is another attempt by the admin. to extend an illegal scheme that pushes the cost of loans onto the vast majority of Americans who have:

-Paid off their debts
-Did not attend college https://t.co/AyeqiZkacc

— Senator Deb Fischer (@SenatorFischer) November 22, 2022

In recent weeks, the Biden administration’s plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student loan debt for millions of American borrowers was halted by two federal judges.

The administration has asked the Department of Justice to appeal the decisions to the Supreme Court.

While the high court assesses the plan’s legality, the pause will prevent mandatory payment collections until a final decision is reached, which could take until June 30, 2023.