- Betsy DeVos called Biden's student-loan forgiveness "100% illegal."
- As Education Secretary, she said Trump didn't have the authority to cancel student debt broadly.
- Biden's Education Department concluded it has the authority to do so under the HEROES Act of 2003.
President Donald Trump's former Education Secretary is unsurprisingly displeased with President Joe Biden's student-loan forgiveness announcement.
Betsy DeVos has long been critical of broad student-loan forgiveness, and while she served in the Education Department, she released a memo that determined Trump did not have the authority to enact broad student-loan forgiveness. But clearly, Biden's department reached the opposite conclusion — it announced on Wednesday up to $20,000 in student-loan forgiveness for federal borrowers making under $125,000 a year.
While many Democratic lawmakers and advocates lauded the relief as a significant step toward combating the $1.7 trillion student debt crisis, DeVos did not see it in that light, calling it "100% illegal."
—Betsy DeVos (@BetsyDeVos) August 24, 2022
This came after DeVos said in June that borrowers have "a lot of tools" to pay off their student debt, and she hoped Biden would "follow the law" and choose not to cancel any of it.
On Tuesday, a day before Biden officially announced the relief, the Education Department's Office of the General Counsel released a memo of its own saying that DeVos' conclusions were "substantively incorrect," and that Biden has the authority to cancel debt broadly in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic under the HEROES Act of 2003.
As Insider has previously reported, the legality surrounding student-loan forgiveness has long been debated. Redacted documents made available in October revealed that Biden's Education Department created a memo on the legality to cancel student debt but did not make the contents of the memo public. And shortly after Biden took office, he expressed hesitancy with canceling a larger amount of student debt, like $50,000, saying he wasn't sure he had the authority to do so.
Still, despite Republican pushback, Biden ultimately decided he does have the authority to cancel up to $20,000 as part of pandemic relief — but that doesn't mean lawsuits will not arise down the road. Democratic lawmakers, however, have consistently said that Biden can cancel $50,000, or all, student debt by simply signing an executive order, and they will continue to push for even more relief.
"This is an important first step to provide critical relief to millions of working people struggling to make ends meet under the burden of their debt," Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar wrote on Twitter. "It also can't be the end of this discussion. There are millions more who have so much debt that even $20,000 only puts a small dent in what they owe. We won't stop fighting until we cancel every dollar of student debt for every American."