About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (March 1, 2023)
OPINION/NATION The Times, Gainesville, Georgia | gainesvilletimes.com Midweek Edition-March 1-2, 2023 7A Supreme Court poised to reject forgiveness of student loan debt PATRICK SEMANSKYI Associated Press Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., speaks at a rally for student debt relief advocates gather outside the Supreme Court on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 28, as the court hears arguments over President Joe Biden’s student debt relief plan. DOJ sues La. chemical maker over cancer risk to minority area BY MARK SHERMAN AND JESSICA GRESKO Associated Press WASHINGTON - Con servative justices holding the Supreme Court’s majority seem ready to sink Presi dent Joe Biden’s plan to wipe away or reduce student loans held by millions of Americans. In arguments lasting more than three hours Tuesday, Chief Justice John Roberts led his conservative col leagues in questioning the administration’s authority to broadly cancel federal student loans because of the COVID-19 emergency. Loan payments that have been on hold since the start of the coronavirus pandemic three years ago are supposed to resume no later than this summer. Without the loan relief promised by the Biden plan, the administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer said, “delinquencies and defaults will surge.” The plan has so far been blocked by Republican- appointed judges on lower courts. It did not appear to fare any better with the six justices appointed by Repub lican presidents. Biden’s only hope for being allowed to move for ward appeared to be the slim possibility, based on the argu ments, that the court would find that Republican-led states and individuals chal lenging the plan lacked the legal right to sue. That would allow the court to dismiss the lawsuits at a threshold stage, with out ruling on the basic idea of the loan forgiveness pro gram that appeared to trou ble the justices on the court’s right side. Roberts was among the justices who grilled Solici tor General Elizabeth Pre- logar and suggested that the administration had exceeded its authority. Three times, the chief justice said the program would cost a half-trillion dollars, pointing to its wide impact and hefty expense as reasons the administration should have gotten explicit approval from Congress. The program, which the adminis tration says is grounded in a 2003 law that was enacted in response to the military con flicts in Iraq and Afghani stan. is estimated to cost $400 billion over 30 years. “If you’re talking about this in the abstract, I think most casual observers would say if you’re going to give up that much... money, if you’re going to affect the obligations of that many Americans on a subject that’s of great contro versy, they would think that’s something for Congress to act on,” Roberts said. Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested he agreed, say ing it “seems problematic” for the administration to use an “old law” to unilater ally implement a debt relief program that Congress had declined to adopt. Neither justice seemed swayed by Prelogar’s expla nation that the administra tion was citing the national emergency created by the pandemic as authority for the debt relief program under a law commonly known as the HEROES Act. “Some of the biggest mis takes in the court’s history were deferring to assertions of executive emergency power,” Kavanaugh said. “Some of the finest moments in the court’s history were pushing back against presi dential assertions of emer gency power.” At another point, though, Kavanaugh suggested the program might be on firmer legal ground than other pandemic-related programs that were ended by the court’s conserva tive majority, including an eviction moratorium and a requirement for vaccines or frequent testing in large workplaces. Those earlier programs halted by the court were billed largely as public health measures intended to slow the spread of COVID-19. The loan forgiveness plan, by contrast, is aimed at coun tering the economic effects of the pandemic. Prelogar and some of the liberal justices sought sev eral times to turn the argu ments back to the people who would benefit from the program. The adminis tration says that 26 million people have applied to have up to $20,000 in federal stu dent loans forgiven under the plan. “The states ask this court to deny this vital relief to millions of Americans,” she said. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said her fellow justices will be making a mistake if they take for themselves, instead of leaving it to education experts, “the right to decide how much aid to give” peo ple who will struggle if the program is struck down. “Their financial situation will be even worse because once you default, the hard ship on you is exponentially greater. You can’t get credit. You’re going to pay higher prices for things,” Soto mayor said. But Roberts pointed to evi dent favoritism. He offered a hypothetical example of a person who passes up college to start a lawn service with borrowed money. “Nobody’s telling the person who is trying to set up the lawn service business that he doesn’t have to pay his loan,” Roberts said. Republican-led states and lawmakers in Congress, as well as conservative legal interests, are lined up against the plan as a violation of Biden’s executive authority. Democratic-led states and liberal interest groups are backing the administration in urging the court to allow the plan to take effect. The justices’ questions mirrored the partisan politi cal divide over the issue, with conservatives arguing that non-college workers should not be penalized and liberals arguing for the break for the college educated. Speaking on the eve of the arguments, Biden had said, “I’m confident the legal authority to carry that plan is there.” The president, who once doubted his own authority to broadly cancel student debt, first announced the program in August. Legal challenges quickly followed. The administration says the HEROES Act allows the secretary of education to waive or modify the terms of federal student loans in connection with a national emergency. The law was primarily intended to keep service members from being hurt financially while they fought in wars in Afghani stan and Iraq. Nebraska and other states that sued say the 20 million borrowers who would have their entire loans erased would get a “windfall” leav ing them better off than before the pandemic. “This is the creation of a brand new program, far beyond what Congress intended,” Nebraska Solici tor General James Campbell said in court Tuesday. The national emergency is expected to end May 11, but the administration says the economic consequences will persist, despite histori cally low unemployment and other signs of economic strength. BY MICHAEL PHILUS AND MATTHEW DALY Associated Press WASHINGTON - Fed eral officials sued a Loui siana chemical maker on Tuesday, alleging that it presents an unacceptable cancer risk to the nearby majority-Black commu nity and demanding cuts in toxic emissions. Denka Performance Elastomer LLC makes syn thetic rubber, emitting the carcinogen chloroprene and other chemicals in such high concentrations that it poses an unaccept able cancer risk, according to the federal complaint. Children are particularly vulnerable. There’s an ele mentary school a half-mile from the plant. The former DuPont plant has reduced its emis sions over time, but the Jus tice Department, suing on behalf of the Environmen tal Protection Agency, said the plant still represents “an imminent and sub stantial endangerment to public health and welfare,” including elevated cancer risks. “The company has not moved far enough or fast enough to reduce emis sions or ensure the safety of the surrounding commu nity,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement. Denka, a Japanese company that bought the rubber-making plant in 2015, did not immediately respond to messages seek ing comment. A company spokesperson said in Sep tember that advocates described a crisis that “sim ply does not exist.” Denka’s facility makes neoprene, a flexible, syn thetic rubber used to pro duce common goods such as wetsuits, laptop sleeves, orthopedic braces and automotive belts and hoses. Chloroprene is a liquid raw material used to produce neoprene and is emitted into the air from various areas at the facility. Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said every community, no matter its demographics, should be able to breathe clean air and drink clean water. “Our suit aims to stop Denka’s dangerous pollution,” she said in a statement. The lawsuit, filed in the Eastern District of Louisi ana in New Orleans, seeks a court order to force Denka to take immediate steps to reduce dangerous emissions of chloroprene. Air monitoring consistently shows long-term chloro prene concentrations in the air near Denka’s LaPlace plant as high as 15 times the levels recommended for a 70-year exposure to the chemical, the complaint says. The complaint is the latest move by the Biden administration that tar gets pollution in an 85-mile stretch from New Orleans to Baton Rouge officially known as the Mississippi River Chemical Corridor, but more commonly called Cancer Alley. The region contains several hot spots where cancer risks are far above levels deemed acceptable by the EPA. The White House has pri oritized environmental enforcement in communi ties overburdened by long term pollution. Regan visited the parish in 2021 during a trip from Mississippi to Texas that highlighted low-income, mostly minority communi ties adversely affected by industrial pollution. 4.00% A TRULY GREAT RATE! LETTERS ■ Continued from 6A Jerusalem west of the Green Line. This would allow all foreign embassies to be moved to Jerusalem. Life is a series of deci sions. Depending on the choices we make, we live with the consequences. If we had upheld law for the occupied Palestinians, then we probably wouldn’t have supported the overthrow of Ukraine’s president. That’s because we’d be a different country today if we had made the right deci sion then. Thus, Ukraine would remain a Russian satellite, and there would be no Russian invasion. It’s not too late to remedy our mistakes. Demand one stan dard of justice. No more aid for Ukraine until we have given the same aid to occu pied Palestinians. Bruce Vandiver Lula Why do Southerners love guns? Monday the 20th, the Gainesville Times announced a new status for Gainesville as the fourth largest urbanized area in Georgia. The previous day, on social media, the gun debate moved to Flowery Branch, a huge part of the new urbanized area. Sev eral people heard a string of gunfire on Sunday, God’s day of rest. Rightfully, some people suspected danger. Yet most people posted in support of the gunfire with out having any facts. They defended the sound of gun fire on Sunday afternoons as a “Southern Tradition,” “family backyard target practice,” and completely “safe.” Someone even said, “I love the smell of gunpowder in the mornings. It smells like Freedom.” That wor ried me. The scariest com ment was the ever present, “I need my gun to protect my family from criminals with guns.” Do Southerners need to fire off guns in their backyard to stop crime? I looked up statistics on the worst crime in civilized society: The murder of police officers killed in the line of duty with a gun. In 2021,61 law enforce ment officers were feloni ously killed with a gun. In comparison, 56 officers died in accidents. Of the 61 killed with a gun, 44 of those deaths happened in the South. Of the shooters, only 20 had been previously arrested for a crime or convicted of a crime. Police officers are more likely to die by a law abiding citizen with a gun, not a felon. Police officers are more likely to be shot to death in the South where private citizens love to pack a gun. Those backyard shooters enjoying a good time on a beautiful Sunday afternoon could be tomorrow’s cop killer. Michael W. Parker Flowery Branch Oil companies not as profitable as you think After reading the letter in your Feb. 22-23 edition headlined “Big oil profits, national debt, and climate crisis” it occurred to me most people don’t really understand the word “profit” as it pertains to the business world. The numbers Mr. Lock cited are the top line rev enues and do not account for operating expenses and taxes. After these expenses are applied the result is a number defined as net profit. This is the real “bottom line” that is most important to any business and is universally seen as the measure of a company’s performance. Comparing total revenues to net profit results in the other magic number called “profit margin.” Guess what, oil compa nies make about 7 cents net profit per gallon of gas. The government (taxes) takes about 48 cents per gallon of gas. If 7 cents net profit per gallon is “unimaginable,” what is seven times that amount taken by govern ment? Using total top line revenues to bash big oil is disingenuous at best, and ill informed at the worst. Thomas Reiter Gainesville 11 month term - 4.00% APY* New money only | $10,000 minimum BANK Understanding You 877.367.5371 *Annual percentage yield (APY) effective as of 3/17/2023. The APY assumes MEMBER interest will remain on deposit until maturity. A penalty may be imposed for early withdrawal. Fees may reduce earnings. Minimum account opening deposit of $10,000.
