Republican leaders and presidential candidates came out to applaud Friday’s Supreme Court decision knock down President Joe Biden‘s student loan relief program.

“I am honored to have played a role in appointing the three justices who secured today’s welcome decision,” said former Vice President Mike Pence, who served under Donald Trump in the White House and is now competing against him in the Republican presidential primary.

Sen. Tim Scott, R.S.C., another presidential candidate, called the loan forgiveness plan “illegal and immoral” an offer to “shift student debt onto taxpayers.”

“If you take out a loan, you pay it back,” Scott said in a statement.

Biden’s debt relief effort would cancel up to $20,000 in student loans for millions of individual borrowers. estimated costs 400 billion dollars.

Payments on these loans, which have been suspended by both the Trump and Biden administrations for more than three years, are set to restore in October.

The 6-3 decision, which split the court’s conservative majority along ideological lines, cut a plank of Biden’s sweeping agenda to provide relief to Americans affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s clearly a blow to the administration,” Katharine Meyer, an education policy expert and fellow at the Brookings Institution, said in an interview Friday.

But Meyer noted that she doesn’t expect the ruling to mark the end of student loan debt forgiveness efforts.

On Friday afternoon, the Biden administration he announced that it is taking steps toward an “alternative path to debt relief” for “as many working and middle-class borrowers as possible.”

“No president has fought harder for student debt relief than President Biden, and has yet to do so,” the White House said in a statement.

Pence and others in the GOP, including the Republican National Committee, have denounced the president’s plan as a subsidy rich university graduatesa category that tends to lean Democratic.

But most borrowers don’t fit into that group: one-third owe less than $10,000, and another 20% owe between $10,000 and $20,000. according to the data last year from The Washington Post.

“The vast majority of borrowers are those who have taken out relatively small loans, and a large number of them have never received a college degree,” Meyer said. “Many of the individuals who would benefit in some way from this policy are lower-income Americans.”

Other Republicans have presented alternative plans to address the nation’s growing student loan debt.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump’s main GOP primary rival, did designed putting universities on the hook when their students default on their debt. Earlier this month, a group of Senate Republicans introduced the package accounts aimed at addressing the “marginally rising” costs of higher education.

Student debt cancellation is a popular idea: Polls showed that a majority of registered voters support at least some form of loan forgiveness.

As of 1 p.m. ET Friday, neither Trump nor DeSantis had weighed in on the decision.