I was talking to my conservative parents today and they were saying "don't count your chickens before they hatch" because there would be many lawsuits against this and they're hoping to get the forgiveness reversed. Of course this is a massively ghoulish position to hold, but after looking into it it does seem like they may be able to do this on the basis that the president can't really allocate money under the :constitution-cool:.
I don't think they actually will do this though because it would be wildly unpopular and diminish the ordinary populace's faith in the government even more. That may be a goal for Republicans though, but at some point the bourgeois must make concessions in order to placate the masses and I think this is probably one of those times.
What do yall think? Is this "illegal" and could it be overturned? Kinda worried about this because this eliminated my SO's student debt
Yes, this is the legal argument for debt relief and the pause of payments. Essentially the Department of Education can just decide they're not going to collect the debt (per the President's order). They've been doing it temporarily for the past few years, there doesn't seem to be any reason they can't do it permanently.
Specifically, there is authority in the Higher Education Act (or maybe HEROES Act?) that gives the executive the authority to forgive student loan debt