Dave Weigel: Not a "gotta hand it to Biden" guy but if it was up to Biden he would have forgiven the debt. It was up to the conservative SCOTUS, which agreed with Republican AGs that he couldn't do it.

Not a "gotta hand it to Biden" guy but if it was up to Biden he would have forgiven the debt. It was up to the conservative SCOTUS, which agreed with Republican AGs that he couldn't do it.

This is not the first generation to discover that the president has vast unchecked war powers and... less vast, pretty well checked domestic powers.

Biden should give a few billion dollars in aid to a foreign country with the requirement that they use at least half of it to buy American student loan debt and forgive it.

Yair Lapid is enough of an American client that if he and Gantz were in charge they might even do it.

See if the ultra-orthodox parties can be sold on "Yeshiva Student Loan Forgiveness".

They can, if they also get some personal bribes for the MKs and their cronies.

And progressives want to cut military aid to Israel, so there's a deal to be made here.. Broke -- Torah study at the Israeli taxpayer's expense. Woke -- Torah study at the American taxpayer's expense.

Also the Biden Administration *has* forgiven an awful lot of student loan debt.

There has been a lot of reporting about this, even though folks are frustrated that their number hasn't gone to zero yet (raising my hand here). About $132 billion for approximately 3.6 million people according to CNN.

Biden administration cancels nearly $5 billion more in student loan debt | CNN Politicswww.cnn.com The Department of Education said Wednesday that it has approved the cancellation of nearly $5 billion more in federal student loan debt, bringing the total amount of student debt relief provided under...

Actually, bluesky users would tell you, this helps no one because payments on those reduced or eliminated debts resumed 🙄

A good case could be made that Biden’s legal argument on the student loan debt matter would have been stronger had he acted a year or more earlier, when the pandemic emergency was still evident. But his argument was pretty strong anyway; the Court chose to disregard it using an invented doctrine.

The fascinating thing is how many people on the left don't believe that these powers are actually checked or that they *should* be.

So many people on the toxic left seem to believe that the President, the Democratic caucus in Congress, and the DNC are each all-powerful entities that could fix every problem, but simply choose not to out of sheer malice. Oh, and that they want to lose on purpose because they're playing 5D chess.

They choose to lose so that they can continue to use the issue to fundraise because if they won they wouldn't find another cause to fundraise off of.

Yes, that's exactly the monumentally dumb conspiracy theory only an idiot would actually believe that I was talking about.

Apologies for any confusion, I forgot to turn on the sarcasm font.

That’s the tell every time.

Also see: The Right, Unitary Presidency.

Yes for sure but The Right's thirst for a strongman no longer surprises me.

then what good is he

you dont really want him to have unchecked powers of any sort.

I wish certain folks would decide whether Biden is a dictator or if he isn't a dictator, but they want him to be.

hes so obviously not a dictator that this accusation just doesnt ever land. I think he is meaner and more shrewd then his Happy Ice Cream Grandpa persona (although that is also genuine), but he has zero dictator tendencies.

I had a TA in college that had spent about a decade as a Senate committee staffer, and once upon a time, he told me that a meeting with Joe Biden or Harry Reid was about as scary as a meeting with a mob boss: both quite nice and somehow subtle, but you were afraid of being whacked the whole time.

He's Schrödinger's dictator.

Oh, but he does have unchecked powers. When it comes to serving the whims of warmongers and aristocrats and paying the salaries of a military full of Palestinian child murderers, he can do anything he wants. He operates completely unchecked by the people.

Glad you agree that it's bad to have unchecked powers

Listen, if you're into the concept of democracy, and against unchecked power, you're gunna love this thing.. it's a little something the kids are calling "communism."

So you're saying the checks and balances put on the presidency by the Constitution are Joseph R. Biden's fault specifically.

Well observed, thanks! Trump‘s tenure was largely enabled by people who voted for him to be king. (As an aside: Obama—as a constitutional scholar—might have found unchecked war powers unsettling. As president, he—at the very least—went along for the ride.) We now return to your regular programming.

What absolute bullshit, because Biden has plenty of unchecked domestic power he's using to make the lives of immigrants as miserable as possible. Liberals not act like insufferable pricks when their bullshit is pointed out challenge: completely fucking impossible.

Eh, Ask FDR and LBJ about that.

He's forgiven $127bn of the debt despite SCOTUS; their decision meant just that he wasn't able to forgive it at the higher $400bn mark

But that doesn't fit the "Biden doesn't care about ANYTHING and can't get ANY PROGRESSIVE POLICY done!" narrative.

It is so frustrating- those kinds of low-info, reflexive complaints make it so much harder to apply the right pressure where it’s needed.

He also immediately said he'd pursue the original forgiveness plan by other means, which in 80-year-old-Senator-speak is basically a declaration of war.

Also too, he's forgiven lots of student loan debt.

I'm currently paying like half as much every month because of his administration. It's getting pretty tiring seeing all these really smart people saying he's never done anything.

maybe they're not really smart then

You know. You might be on to something here.

I have my own qualms about the student loan thing but I mostly blame SCOTUS on that one

Honestly, it never personally affected me because I was already halfway through my income based repayment plan but I was still rooting for it because it helped so many other people.

We HAVE to find some way to get people informed about how govt works, who can do what & how it gets done & doesn't. People think Presidents can just give an order & anything they want just happens.

I mean he absolutely could have forgiven the debt instantly in a way that didn't give people a chance to litigate it. But I certainly can't be sure he didn't do it that way because he's a brain broken process liberal instead of because he knew doing it that way would fail.

This kinda energy bsky.app/profile/bunn...

OP blocks me - if you think I should see it pls screenshot, no prob if not

This was what you were missing.

That’s not how debt work. If someone thinks I own then money, they can always litigate it!

If the government forgives a loan and then deletes the records a future president can theoretically "litigate" it but they won't because they don't have the records.

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