Senate rejects bid to repeal Biden’s income-driven student loan repayment rule

The Democratic-controlled Senate rejected a resolution Wednesday that sought to overturn the Biden administration’s regulation on income-driven repayment for student loans.

The upper chamber shot down the Congressional Review Act resolution on a near party-line 50-49 vote, with centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) joining with Republicans to support the measure. Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) did not cast a vote.

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The resolution would have overturned the Department of Education’s Income Driven Repayment regulation, which allows student loan borrowers to make payments based on their income above the poverty line. The regulation also allows the loans to be forgiven after 10 years of continuous payments.

The resolution was sponsored by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who told the Washington Examiner in an interview that the regulation was fundamentally unfair.

“This is erasing the whiteboard and you don’t have to pay. Someone else is going to pay it for you,” Cassidy said after casting his vote for the resolution. “I think that’s fundamentally unfair in a democracy. If the idea of a democracy is everyone is treated the same, this is not democracy.”

Despite being in the minority in the Senate and having a razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives, congressional Republicans have had some success in passing Congressional Review Act resolutions aimed at rolling back particularly unpopular regulations enacted by the Biden administration.

Sens. Jon Tester (D-MT) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) have not shied away from bucking the president on Congressional Review Act resolutions, but both voted against Wednesday’s measure, ensuring the resolution to reverse Biden’s student loan policy does not reach the president’s desk.

The White House has made student loan policy a major focus, attempting to cancel up to $20,000 in federally held student loans for borrowers making less than $125,000 per year. The effort was blocked by the Supreme Court in June, but the administration has still taken steps to cancel loans through other means, including the income-driven repayment program.

The Department of Education says it has canceled $127 billion in student loans for some 3.6 million borrowers.

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Cassidy told the Washington Examiner he sees the president’s student loan cancellation efforts as an attempt to “buy off” a segment of the electorate.

“This is politics,” the senator said. “He’s up for reelection, he sees his poll numbers are lousy, and he’s hoping to buy off a set of voters.”