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President Joe Biden has vetoed a GOP-led effort to block his student debt relief.
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An unlikely two-thirds majority in the House and Senate is needed to override his veto.
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The Supreme Court must also review the legality of Biden’s plan by the end of June.
President Joe Biden signed a veto on Wednesday, blocking a GOP-led measure to roll back student debt relief measures that would see recipients have up to $20,000 in debt erased.
The bill, reintroduced in February, passed both the House and Senate last week, with Biden vowing to veto it if it crossed his desk.
In addition to blocking debt relief, the bill would end the pandemic-era student loan payment pause first put in place by former President Donald Trump, and which would otherwise continue until the fall.
In a video posted to Twitter of Biden signing the veto, he said, “I will not back down from my efforts to help tens of millions of working and middle class families.”
Biden’s debt relief plan, targeted by the bill, would forgive $10,000 of student debt, or up to $20,000 for those who received a Pell grant, for borrowers earning less than $125,000 $ per year.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the plan will cost taxpayers about $400 billion over 40 years.
In the video, Biden added, “Some of the same congressmen who want to cut student aid have personally received loans to keep their small businesses afloat during the pandemic.”
He also noted that the same lawmakers had also backed tax cuts for the wealthy.
“But when it comes to hard-working Americans trying to get ahead of student debt relief, that’s where they draw the line,” he said. he declares.
Lawmakers who have accepted the pandemic loans include Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz and Kevin Hern.
The Tories have argued that the debt relief measure is unfair to people who didn’t go to college but still have debt.
“What about the man who skipped college but is paying off his work truck loan, or the woman who’s been educated and is now struggling to pay her mortgage under the Biden’s economy?” wrote the senses. Chuck Grassley and Bill Cassidy in May.
A two-thirds majority in the House and Senate is needed to override Biden’s veto, which is unlikely to be achieved even with the handful of Democrats who initially helped the bill cross the line in both chambers.
But despite Biden’s veto, the debt relief measure is not home and dry. The Supreme Court has heard arguments about its legality through a pair of Conservative-backed lawsuits and is expected to issue a ruling by the end of June.
Read the original article on Business Insider