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The billionaire behind the group that brought down Biden's student debt relief program is Bernie Marcus, former Home Depot CEO, at right. | Protest photo: AP / Marcus photo: Home Depot
On Friday, a federal judge in Texas struck down President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, declaring it illegal. Judge Mark Pittman, appointed by former President Donald Trump, proclaimed the program “an unconstitutional exercise of Congress’s legislative power [that] must be vacated.”

As a recent college graduate with over $20,000 in student loan debt, you can imagine my frustration. I filed the loan forgiveness application the moment it came out. Still, I had doubts about the forgiveness materializing within six weeks, as stated on the Student Aid website.

The lawsuit challenging the program was filed by the Jobs Creators Network Foundation (JCN), a conservative advocacy group founded by billionaire Bernard “Bernie” Marcus. The group boasts as active members wealthy businesspeople like Brad Anderson, former CEO of Best Buy, and Heidi Ganahl, the wealthy GOP candidate that lost her gubernatorial bid in Colorado this week. Marcus, 93, is a co-founder of Home Depot and retired CEO, but most of his wealth is still in Home Depot stock.

Marcus and his wife were top donors to Donald Trump in past elections. They also donated $14.9 million to Republicans in the 2022 midterms, which includes a $1.75 million donation to Herschel Walker’s controversial Senate campaign in Georgia. Original reports attributed the Walker donation to Home Depot, spurring the company to clarify in a tweet that the almost $2 million political contribution was from their former CEO and not the company itself.

It is not the first time Home Depot has had to make public statements regarding Marcus’s donations to GOP campaigns. In 2019, Home Depot also sought to distance itself from Marcus after calls to boycott the company began circulating on social media in response to his public support for the Trump campaign.

Elaine Parker, president of the Job Creators Network Foundation which led the lawsuit against student debt relief. | Fox
While Home Depot claims the company does not support any presidential candidates, this does not absolve it from the hundreds of thousands of dollars it spent supporting the campaigns of the 147 members of the “Sedition Caucus,” the representatives who refused to certify the 2020 election on baseless claims of the “Big Lie.” Home Depot pledged to end political contributions to these representatives only to renege on their pledge a year later and become the third biggest corporate donor to the Sedition Caucus.

Marcus’s attack on the much-needed student loan forgiveness program is one of his many historical initiatives to harm the working class. He is one of the several business tycoons who has consistently lobbied against the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) that would expand protections for workers unionizing their workplaces. Marcus also used his Jobs Creators Network to launch bus tours in 2017 and 2018 to promote the Trump administration’s infamous tax cuts for the rich.

Elaine Parker, president of Job Creators Network Foundation, argues that stealing debt relief from the 26 million Americans who already applied for the program “protects the rule of law which requires all Americans to have their voices heard by the federal government.”

Considering the anti-democratic history of the advocacy group, it’s clear that the “voices” she’s referring to are not the millions of people that organized and voted for student loan forgiveness. Instead, her concern lies with the wealthy business owners who make up her group’s membership and pay her $213,000 yearly salary.

One of the plaintiffs in the case, Myra Brown, claims to be harmed by the debt relief program because she’s not eligible for it since private companies funded her student loans. Evidently, the $48,000 PPP loan forgiveness she received for her sign-making business in April of this year was not enough (despite it being five times the $10,000 debt forgiveness amount I hoped to receive under Biden’s program).

Judge Pittman, a federal judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, isn’t much of a champion for democracy either. Pittman is vice president and a founding member of the Tarrant County Federalist Society—the local chapter of the influential conservative legal group primarily responsible for empowering the Supreme Court’s far-right rampage.

The Federalist Society is the largest donor to the consulting firm that assisted the Job Creators Network in their lawsuit that Judge Pittman then ruled in favor of. I assume this is just a coincidence!

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#StudentDebtCancellation #americanoligarchs #americanplutocrats

Last updated 2 years ago

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