Republican Presidential Candidates Celebrate Student Loan Ruling

Much of the Republican field of presidential candidates was unanimous in praising the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to reject President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.

Former President Donald J. Trump praised the ruling during an address to attendees at the Moms For Liberty conference in Philadelphia.

“Today the Supreme Court also ruled that President Biden cannot wipe out hundred of billions, perhaps trillions of dollars in student loan debt, which would have been very unfair to the millions and millions of people who paid their debt through hard work and diligence, very unfair,” he said.

He called Mr. Biden a “corrupt president” and lamented that the plan was “a way to buy votes.”

Senator Tim Scott, Nikki Haley and former Vice President Mike Pence were among the first of the 2024 contenders to signal their alignment with the six conservative justices in supporting the decision.

“The U.S. Supreme Court was right to end the illegal and immoral effort by the Biden Administration to transfer student debt to taxpayers,” Mr. Scott wrote on Twitter. “If you take out a loan, you pay it back.”

He called on colleges and universities to “act to lower tuition and improve the quality of their programs” and vowed that as president, he would take action to make education more affordable and to expand access to vocational training.

Mr. Pence sought credit for having “played a role in appointing three of the Justices that ensured today’s welcomed decision” — though he did not mention former President Donald J. Trump even as he highlighted one of the Trump administration’s signature achievements.

“Joe Biden’s massive trillion-dollar student loan bailout subsidizes the education of elites on the backs of hardworking Americans,” Mr. Pence wrote on Twitter, “and it was an egregious violation of the Constitution for him to attempt to do so unilaterally with the stroke of the executive pen.”

Ms. Haley was similarly critical, painting the president’s plan as unfair.

“A president cannot just wave his hand and eliminate loans for students he favors, while leaving out all those who worked hard to pay back their loans or made other career choices,” Ms. Haley wrote on Twitter.

In a speech Friday morning in Philadelphia, she heaped praise on the court: “Can I just say God bless the Supreme Court? They are righting a lot of wrongs.”

Vivek Ramaswamy and Asa Hutchinson soon joined in as well, and while Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has not released an official statement, his campaign used the moment to highlight his higher education policies in Florida.

In a video published by his campaign’s account on Twitter, Mr. DeSantis is seen on the campaign trail in South Carolina, promoting Florida’s rules on state school tuition rates and saying that colleges and universities “should be responsible for defaulted student loan debt.”

“If you produce somebody that can’t pay it back,” he continues, “that’s on you.”

Mr. Ramaswamy posted a two-and-a-half minute video to Twitter extolling the decision, citing its legal underpinnings as a “powerful precedent” that could target “most of the regulations of the administrative state.”

Mr. Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, also commended the decision, stating that the “ruling reaffirms the importance of upholding our legal framework and preserving the checks and balances that ensure the proper functioning of our government.” He also called for finding a legislative solution to the student loan debt crisis.

Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota added his voice to the chorus of praise for the decision later Friday afternoon: “Erasing the debt of high-paid, college-educated workers at the expense of blue-collar Americans is wrong, and would have exacerbated inflation significantly,” he said in a statement, adding that “the Constitution clearly states that spending originates in Congress.”

Another Republican candidate, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, has not publicly commented on the decision.

Anjali Huynh contributed reporting.