here to take any questions as well. mr. secretary? thank you. good afternoon. in the last 48 hours, our country has been setback in terms of providing equity and access in higher education. as you heard from the president today the supreme court ruled against more than 40 million working families. let s be clear about who would have benefitted from the president s student debt relief plan. nearly 90% of relief would have gone to borrowers making less than $75,000 a year. 20 million americans would see their debts drop to zero with 20 million more seeing lower payments. this would mean fewer borrowers following in to default when the pause ends. we re not taking about the millionaires that benefitted from the tax give-away. we re talking about lower and mim income families recovers
covid outbreak. so they have already gotten a benefit until the supreme court decision today. again, these are the decisions you make to congress. congress is the one that is in charge of taxes. they decide what to spent money on. this is just another appeal neil: john, i m going to interrupt you. jacqui heinrich is addressing the secretary. let s go back to the conference. had the authority on the hero s act. the hero s act made it clear, the authority to modify or waive. the supreme court saw it differently. we re moving forward 92 another path and going to put the best legal argument forward to provide relief for borrowers. that s our focus. you think this court will see eye to eye with you? it s the same court. we re going to keep fighting and put the best argument forward. did you want to talk about a bigger plan? sure.
angry with decisions like dobbs from last year, about abortion. or gun rights from last year in bruin. or new in this case against affirmative action and now students loans. you ve seen progressives propose trying to pack the court, add more members, trying to cut back on the kind of cases they re allowed to decide. now proposals for investigations of justices, making it easier to recuse from cases. we haven t seen this kind of attack since the court decided brown versus board. these attacks were launched by southern segregationists or the new deal when fdr tried these attacks on the court that wanted to start up for contract and property rights. i predict after these losses this last two years, we ll see enhanced attacks on the court by progressives. neil: and there s going to be a white house briefing that will include the education secretary, miguel cardona expanding on what the white house plans to
the situation we were in during the pandemic, others will argue, these were emergency life lines for people that didn t want to find themselves in these situations. i thought mark made a great point, if the president is going to congress for any of this really seemed to pick a fight. he said when he came up with this plan, to suspend the student debts and wipe out and forgive the loans that the gop just couldn t stand the thought of helping the middle class. shoe we know what the line is going to be. he will be out there on the campaign trail saying this is a maga, look what they have done. that s why i need another term. former president trump is saying look what happened had the supreme court. you re welcome. i gave you three of these justices. it s something that will be used on the campaign trail. the current president will say i tried to get you this help. the courts stopped me. i going to find another way. again, the court said today under the hero s act, that s all that is befor
pointing out this happened after the covid relief money, that was money that congress earmarked and the prior administration signed in to law. this was different. this was done by the executive pen. republicans came out clearly to say this president like you said may have overstepped his bounds. mitch mcconnell saying this equal to socialism in his book. i thought polling was interesting. the president of the united states cannot hijack 21-year-old emergency powers to pad the pockets of high-earning base and make suckers out of the working families that chose not to take on student debt. mitch mcconnell said the court s decision deal as heavy blow to democrats distorted and out sized view of executive power. so while republicans are saying that they were trying to protect the role that congress has here, the white house is ready to say this is a battle between the rich and the poor. the other question, neil, how much of this is an issue in next year s campaign. the polling was mixed on