It’s beginning to look like President Joe Biden’s plan to wipe away or reduce student loans held by millions of Americans is going to be a non-starter.
In arguments lasting more than three hours Tuesday, Chief Justice John Roberts led his conservative colleagues 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. If the loan relief promised by the Biden plan fails to materialize, not only will “delinquencies and defaults surge”, affecting millions of people, but it may also impact the economy.
The plan has so far been blocked by Republican-appointed judges on lower courts. It appears that the plan will not do any better with the six justices appointed by Republican presidents.
Biden’s only hope for being allowed to move forward appeared to be the slim possibility, based on the arguments, that the court would find that Republican-led states and individuals challenging the plan lacked the legal right to sue. But this is a remote possibility.
If that were to happen, it would allow the court to dismiss the lawsuits at a threshold stage, without ruling on the basic idea of the loan forgiveness program that appeared to trouble the justices on the court’s right side.
Roberts was among the justices who grilled Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar and suggested that the administration had exceeded its authority.
The chief justice is deeply concerned about the cost of the plan, three times he noted that 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 Biden administration says is grounded in a 2003 law that was enacted in response to the military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, is estimated to cost $400 billion over 30 years.
Given the cost and the widespread impact of the proposed plan, Roberts concluded, “that’s something for Congress to act on”.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed, saying it “seems problematic” for the administration to use an “old law” to unilaterally implement a debt relief program that Congress had declined to adopt.
