Waiting for Go-dough!

President Biden has stoked and stoked the student loan forgiveness plan, hoping to cancel $20,000 in student debt for Pell Grant recipients earning under $125,000 a year. The plan also included relief for other federal borrowers, but those efforts may be permanently blocked now.

A death knell for Biden’s dream was tolled on Tuesday by the Supreme Court and the pall over Pell recipients has all but dissipated their hopes of any kind of federal relief.

Right from the onset of Biden’s announcement last summer, the forecast was gloomy with Republican-led states Iowa, Arkansas, Nebraska, and South Carolina joining others charging that the plan would hurt their tax revenues and essentially exceed Biden’s authority, the dreaded overreach.

Desperate to bolster his plan, Biden resorted to the HEROES Act of 2003, which gives the Secretary of Education the power to waive or modify student loan balances, in effect a kind of national emergency.

But opposition forces insisted that such an action would abuse the HEROES Act. Moreover, the states declared that Biden’s plan was not within his executive jurisdiction, that it had to go through Congress.

If the Supreme Court rules against him, Biden, in reality, has no backup plan, though there remains the possibility of canceling the student debt through a settlement compromise via the Higher Education Act.

Rather than wait for the manna from Biden or the feds, debtors should canvass the various public service forgiveness programs and hope the account adjustments promises kick in later this year.

Other than that, they can only hope the Supreme Court comes to the rescue and that’s like waiting for Godot.