License to Steal

Federal agencies never let a good crisis go to waste, unless you are talking about wasting taxpayer dollars. Among many ways they exploited the Covid-19 crisis was to raid the treasury and stick taxpayers with the bill for illegal giveaways to their most dependable voting blocks.

Consider the Biden Administration’s mass “forgiveness” of outstanding student loans. Before the pandemic, there was bipartisan agreement that neither the president nor his education bureaucracy could simply wave a magic wand and wipe out loans without a vote by Congress. It was also widely understood that only Congress could suspend payment obligations and interest accrual on these loans except in individualized cases of demonstrated hardship.

But when the Covid-19 crisis came along, bureaucrats in the Department of Education tossed bipartisan consensus to the wind and decided they could act unilaterally. The first Trump Administration got things started in March 2020 with a press release announcing the immediate suspension of all payment obligations and interest accrual on outstanding student loans for at least 60 days. The press release cited no statutory or other legal authority to take this unprecedented action.

As it happens, this initial administrative fiat lasted only a week, because Congress passed the CARES Act in late March 2020, which lawfully suspended payments and interest on student loans through September 30, 2020. So far, so good.

Congress never extended that end date. As the date approached, however, the Department again reached for its pen and phone. Citing “the financial stress many may be facing due to the coronavirus pandemic” and the ongoing “national emergency,” it unilaterally extended the suspension of payments and interest accrual through the end of 2020. Voila!

As the year-end deadline approached, however, the Department acted unilaterally again. In early December, it extended the suspension of student-loan payments and interest accrual until January 31, 2021.

Before that new deadline expired, the Biden Administration took over and things got surreal. On his first day in office, President Biden directed his Department of Education to extend the deadline indefinitely, and the Department did so the following day. Then in August 2021, the Department announced a “final” extension until January 31, 2022. But in December 2021, citing the ongoing “impacts of the pandemic,” the Department extended the supposedly “final” deadline yet again—this time until May 1, 2022.

The Department later extended the deadline yet again until August 31, 2022, and when August came around it announced another “final” extension through the end of 2022. President Biden simultaneously announced his now-infamous mass student loan giveaway scheme (which the Supreme Court ultimately struck down in June 2023). As the 2022 year-end approached, the Department yet again extended its “final” deadline—this time indefinitely, until 60 days after the conclusion of then-pending litigation challenging the mass loan cancellation scheme. Shortly after the Supreme Court decision in the case, Congress passed the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, which included a statutory hard stop on the suspension of payments and interest accrual at the end of September.

In all, the Department of Education under two different presidents—with no legitimate statutory authority from Congress—repeatedly extended the CARES Act’s September 30, 2020 expiration date for the suspension of student-loan payment obligations and interest accrual for more than three full years. This brazenly unlawful administrative action cost taxpayers an estimated $175 billion over the three-year period. All without any authorization or appropriation from our elected representatives in Congress. Recent news reports indicate that almost 10 million student borrowers were past due on their loan payments as of year-end 2024.

April 1, 2025