This is the Libertarian Podcast at the Hoover Institution.

I'm your host Tom Church and the Libertarian is of course Professor Richard Epstein.

Richard is the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow here at the Hoover Institution.

He is the Lawrence Att Tish Professor of Law

over at NYU and is a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. And

Richard today I thought we'd talk about something near and dear to many of your students' hearts,

and that would be the topic of student loans.

Now this is in the news again because Jen Pasaki, President Biden's press secretary,

mentioned that the Biden administration is trying to do

something on student loans perhaps canceling them by I think Q3 of this year. Now

we're talking about 1.7 trillion dollars in outstanding loans. In a recent interview, Senator Warren from

Massachusetts said we knew this would be legal because President Obama, Trump,

and Biden have canceled interest payments for some borrowers, so therefore

President Biden could cancel, I guess, all of them.

I need to know, I looked at the Constitution, I think the legislative branch is in control

of spending decisions, not the president.

How is it constitutional?

How could this happen that President Biden could forgive $1.7 trillion unilaterally?

Well first of all, the question is when you actually forgive that money, is it an expenditure, at which point it would have to go through the usual views of the Senate and the House, a House starting in the Senate taking it.

But they've already forgiven some interest.

And so the question then is, it may well be,

if you look at the authorizing statute,

...