Hoover Senior Fellows File Supreme Court Amicus Brief In Case Challenging President Biden’s Student-Loan Debt Relief Program

On February 3, 2023, a group of former high-ranking US government officials, led by Hoover senior fellows Michael McConnell and John Cogan, Hudson Institute fellow Christopher DeMuth, and American Enterprise Institute emeritus fellow Peter Wallison, filed an amicus brief in the US Supreme Court case challenging President Biden’s student loan debt-relief program. The signatories included former White House counsel C. Boyden Gray, senior fellow John B. Taylor, former attorneys general Bill Barr and Michael Mukasey, three former directors of the Office of Management and Budget, and other former officials at the Department of Justice, the Treasury, and the Office of Management and Budget with extensive experience in the administration of federal appropriations law. The brief focuses on the key constitutional question posed by President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan: Does spending money under the supposed authority of a strained and far-fetched interpretation of a congressional spending statute violate the fundamental constitutional principle that Congress, not the president, has the power of the purse?

The Supreme Court is expected to rule no later than July.  A summary of the amicus brief appears below, and the entire brief can be found here on the Supreme Court’s website.

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