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.
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.”
