Dear Secretary Cardona,

As Missouri’s U.S. Senator, I have stood up to and prevented the Biden Administration’s executive
overreach, in order to fight for taxpayers and working families. This morning, this Administration
announced the automatic cancellation of debt “by fixing past administrative failures.”[1] This action
continues this Administration’s march to ignore Congress and enact economy-wide change by fiat.
Late last month, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down this Administration’s unlawful plan to cancel
student debt.[2] In 2022, this Administration attempted to unilaterally—without any Congressional
authority—enact a plan that would cost taxpayers nearly $500 billion.[3] In response, I took this
Administration to court as Missouri’s Attorney General. The Court found that this unlawful scheme
“directly injures Missouri,”[4] and that there was “no authorization for the Secretary’s plan even when
examined using the ordinary tools of statutory interpretation.”[5] Despite your arguments to the contrary,
the Secretary of Education does not “enjoy virtually unlimited power to rewrite the Education Act” in
order to cancel massive amounts of debt.[6]
Mere hours after the Court struck down your unlawful scheme, President Biden announced a “new
approach” to try to enact this massive debt cancellation yet again.[7] In response, the U.S. Department of
Education announced a process to develop new regulations related to the Higher Education Act.[8] The
ink was not even dry on the Court’s decision, yet it appears that this Administration intends to surrender
to the far-left fringes of the Democratic Party and use Section 432(a) of the Higher Education Act to enact
a new debt cancellation plan.[9]
President Biden has already asserted to the American public that “this new path is legally sound.”[10]
After suing this Administration already for its first attempt at cancelling debt, I find that statement
dubious. Furthermore, the Department of Education has determined that the Secretary does not have this
authority. As recently as 2021, your Department consulted with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of
Legal Counsel on this very matter.[11] The Department concluded “the Secretary does not have statutory
authority to provide blanket or mass cancellation, compromise, discharge, or forgiveness of student loan
principal balances, and/or to materially modify the repayment amounts or terms thereof, whether due to
the COVID-19 pandemic or for any other reason.”[12] This is not a partisan position. Even leaders of
your own party have asserted, “The President can only postpone, delay but not forgive student loans. It
would take an act of Congress, not an executive order, to cancel student loan debt.”[13] Nothing in statute
explicitly permits this Administration to enact a plan to provide massive, wide-spread debt cancellations.
Additionally, I write to remind you that the Court determined student debt cancellation is expressly a
decision for the Article I branch, not for unelected bureaucrats in the Article II branch. With your most
recent scheme, the Court found the plan simply amounted to “the Executive seizing the power of the
Legislature.”[14] Common sense demands that Congress would not have intended a law enacted decades
ago to permit department officials to reinterpret and reimagine new authorities to eliminate hundreds of
billions of dollars in debt. As the Court succinctly wrote, “’[t]he basic and consequential tradeoffs’
inherent in a mass debt cancellation program ‘are ones that Congress would likely have intended for
itself.’”[15] In short, this Administration’s plan will remain unlawful until the proposal attains the consent
of both chambers of Congress and is signed by the President.
I have already taken this Administration to court once—and won—to stop illegal schemes that simply
further an unfair bailout. I do not intend to stand idly by as this Administration once again pushes an
unlawful plan that will require working American taxpayers to foot the bill.[16] This new proposal will
likely fail for the same reasons: our Republic promotes the separation of powers among the branches of
our federal government. As this Administration pushes forward with its new radical plan, it ignores
Congress and bipartisan solutions to actually lower the cost of higher education at its own risk.
In order to conduct proper oversight of your next actions, I respectfully ask that you provide me with the
following information and answers:
· Does this Administration intend to cancel up to $50,000 in student debt, as advocated by
multiple leaders in the Democratic Party? Please provide any rationale or economic assumptions
that the Department intends to rely upon.
· What legal basis does the Administration attempt to rely on, given the Department of
Education have already concluded the Higher Education Act does not provide any authority for
massive debt cancellations?
· What actions has this Administration taken in 2023 to submit its massive debt cancellation
plan to Congress, instead of allowing “negotiated rulemaking committee” to make a decision that
costs taxpayers over $500 billion without any Congressional approval?

I appreciate your prompt attention to these questions.

Sincerely,

[1] Sam Fossum, Biden administration announces $39 billion in student debt relief following
administrative fixes, CNN July 14, 2023.
[2][2] Biden v. Nebraska, 600 U.S. _____ (2023).
[3] 87 Fed. Reg. 61512–61514.
[4] 600 U.S.
[5] Id. at 25.
[6] Id.
[7][7] President Joseph Biden, Remarks by President Biden on the Supreme Court’s Decision on the
Administration’s Student Debt Relief Program (June 30, 2023).
[8] Press Release, U.S. Department of Education, FACT SHEET: President Biden Announces New
Actions to Provide Debt Relief and Support for Student Loan Borrowers (June 30, 2023),
https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/fact-sheet-president-biden-announces-new-actions-provide-debt-r
elief-and-support-student-loan-borrowers; 20 U.S.C. 28.
[9] See Press Release, Office of U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Warren, Schumer, Pressley, Colleagues:
President Biden Can and Should Use Executive Action to Cancel up to $50,000 in Federal Student Loan
Debt Immediately (Feb. 4, 2021),
https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-schumer-pressley-colleagues-president-b
iden-can-and-should-use-executive-action-to-cancel-up-to-50000-in-federal-student-loan-debt-immediatel
y.
[10] President Joseph Biden, Remarks by President Biden on the Supreme Court’s Decision on the
Administration’s Student Debt Relief Program (June 30, 2023).
[11] See Memorandum for Betsy Devos, Secretary of Education, from Reed D. Rubinstein, Principal
Deputy General Counsel, Department of Education, Re: Student Loan Principal Balance Cancellation,
Compromise, Discharge, and Forgiveness Authority (Jan. 12, 2021).
[12] Id.
[13] Yacob Reyes, Pelosi says Biden lacks "power" to cancel student debt, AXIOS (July 29, 2021).
[14] 600 U.S. at 21.
[15] Id. at 24-25.
[16] Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Is Biden's Student Debt Cancellation Plan Still
Regressive? (Oct. 3, 2022) (“In the end, the Administration’s student debt cancellation proposal is costly,
inflationary, will drive up higher education costs, and will deliver the majority of the benefits to those in
the top half of the income spectrum.”).