President Joe Biden made a campaign promise to "shut the virus down." He made this claim repeatedly because his advisers thought he had stumbled into a clever saying about not shutting down the country again. Now, almost two full years into his term, Biden is using presidential authority he believes he has under the 2003 HEROES Act to suspend student loan payments once again and, on top of that, attempt unilaterally to waive up to $20,000 in Pell Grant student loans or $10,000 in other loans.
It was on March 13, 2020, that President Donald Trump declared a nationwide emergency pursuant to Sec. 501(b) of the Stafford Act, making the COVID-19 pandemic a national emergency.
Biden, in abusing this power, is going against his own administration's legal arguments concerning the declaration from earlier this year. In May, the Biden administration argued in a federal court in Louisiana against the Trump-enacted immigration policy known as Title 42. Biden's officials argued in favor of lifting the border restriction, which was implemented to turn migrants back to Mexico due to the public health emergency.
This argument seems to undercut Biden's legal argument for waiving student debt under the guise of the HEROES Act. The president must answer: Are we still in a pandemic or not? Are we still in a public health crisis, the one he's using to justify unilateral abuse of power, or has he shut down the virus, moved the country to the road of economic recovery, and created historic progress? The administration has moved the goalposts on what a recession is, and now, its leaders are moving the goalposts again with the COVID emergency-to-non-emergency switch to satisfy a voting block heading into the midterm elections.
Another fallacy for Biden is he says by waiving away $20,000 in student debt that he is delivering on a campaign promise, but how is he delivering on a three-year-old campaign promise using only emergency powers? A curious media would all be asking these questions.
There seem to be few reporters in the whole of our national media interested in this dilemma. Fox News White House reporter Jacqui Heinrich is one of them; she pressed White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on this clear and obvious duplicity of policy.
"The HEROES Act hinges on student debt ... being tied to the pandemic and that being a national emergency, but the administration argued in court that [it's] over ... So, how is ... COVID a national emergency when it comes to student debt?" she asked.
Jean-Pierre had no good answer because there is no good answer beyond Biden clearly exploiting a loophole and doing so unconstitutionally. "Some folks are ... going to have a little bit harder time [with payments] ... though ... the economy has been turned back on because of the work [Biden] has done," Jean-Pierre replied. Thanks to this administration's doublespeak, COVID is either a convenient emergency or no problem at all, depending on the circumstances.
Biden turns on and turns off the pandemic emergency as he and his White House see fit to enact pet causes. Under this national declaration, there are unlimited ways that he or any other president can abuse this power. Biden is also attempting to claim success in "shutting down the virus," and yet we cannot seem to find a single legacy journalist interested in making this administration or this president account for this discrepancy. The only other answer, to prevent Biden and future presidents from abusing this national emergency declaration, is impeachment.
Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) has written for National Review, the New York Post, and Fox News and hosts the Versus Media podcast.
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Tags: Opinion, Beltway Confidential, Blog Contributors, Joe Biden, Coronavirus
Original Author: Stephen L. Miller
Original Location: Biden can't decide whether or not we're still in a pandemic