JUST THERE TO PROVIDE A LEFTY TALKING POINT FOR PUNDITS WHO WON’T READ IT: New Report on State Standing in Student Loan Case Comes Up A Few Dollars Short: A new report purporting to show that Missouri’s arguments for standing in Nebraska v. BIden are based on a lie fails to deliver.
This week, the Roosevelt Institute and the Debt Collective issued a new report purporting to challenge the factual basis for state standing in Nebraska v. Biden. Specifically, the report purported to show that Missouri’s argument that it has standing because student loan forgiveness will cause MOHELA—a student loan servicer created by Missouri—”to lose financial revenue, thereby harming the state” is “fundamentally false.”
Progressive commentators rushed to proclaim that the report blew a hole in the arguments for state standing to challenge student loan forgiveness. Tori Otten of The New Republic proclaimed that the report shows “the main argument at the heart of the lawsuit is utterly false.” University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck tweeted that the study revealed “MOHELA won’t be injured by the program at all” (emphasis in original).
Yet if one reads the study, one sees that it shows no such thing. To the contrary, it demonstrates quite conclusively that the Biden Administration’s student loan forgiveness plan will result in MOHELA receiving millions of dollars less in revenue than it would have otherwise. Whether or not harms to MOHELA should be considered harms to Missouri, there is no way to read the report as showing that MOHELA “won’t be injured at all” by student loan forgiveness.
Forget it, Jake, it’s lefty pundittown.