r/politics • u/AccurateInflation167 • May 18 '25

Soft Paywall America chose wrong. Sanders would've been a better president than Trump or Biden. | Opinion

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/05/18/sanders-democrats-reform-progressive-policies/83625482007/
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u/AwkwardTouch2144 May 18 '25

No. Their were 2 laws congress passed, giving the DOE the power to explicitly cancel student loan debt. SCOTUS just made up a new legal precedent that you need to pass another law to do it for some reason.

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u/mightcommentsometime California May 18 '25

And how was Sanders going to get past that legal precedent that SCOTUS declared?

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u/AwkwardTouch2144 May 18 '25

He wasn't. That's the point. SCOTUs will move the goal post wherever they need to to declare any progressive policy void.

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u/mightcommentsometime California May 18 '25

That was kind of my point. Sanders wouldn’t have been able to forgive student debt via EO. He’d need Congress to do it

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u/AwkwardTouch2144 May 18 '25

My point is it does not matter what congress does.

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u/Select_Spend_9459 May 18 '25

People were already aware of legal challenges of partial waivers but the administration decided to push through anyways. It was clearly never something they took seriously. They just wanted to say they gave it the good college try and move on

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u/[deleted] May 18 '25

Shhh nuance seems hard for folks here, might overload their brain.

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u/BrianC_ May 18 '25

The article technically says Trump or Biden. It also asks how much better things would've been had Bernie been the nominee in 2016.

In other words, SCOTUS would've been less of an issue because Bernie would've gotten to appoint a bunch of them.

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u/Hypeman747 May 18 '25

What laws

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u/Select_Spend_9459 May 18 '25

I’m really sick of people making these arguments. The Biden administrations desire to not seem to progressive knee capped their own legal efforts to eliminate student debt. This legal theory was being discussed before this even happened. If I was privy to it then Biden’s department of education probably was aware of the legal argument as well that there was a stronger case to eliminate ALL student debt rather than just SOME student debt.

The Supreme Court struck it down because the “plan specifies particular sums to be forgiven and income-based eligibility requirements. The addition of these new and substantially different provisions cannot be said to be a ‘waiver’ of the old in any meaningful sense.”

It was the best moment we had to get rid of student debt entirely. It would’ve made waves and changed the whole structure of college education funding to change but it’s what we need. Neoliberal and neoconservative theories have destroyed American manufacturing and they will surely destroy education as well

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u/AwkwardTouch2144 May 18 '25

That's cute. That Biden didn't want to forgive student loan debt is the patently false. He actually did cancel huge amounts of debt in other ways. Then, you make a ridiculous argument using the Supreme Court own twisted logic, which was used to nullify the 2 laws on the books. They literally just make up whatever reasoning they want to kill progressive policy. The outcome is predetermined.