As the Associated Press reported recently, the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court seems ready to overturn the Biden administration’s attempt at student loan forgiveness.

While we do not claim to assess the constitutionality of the executive order or of the effort to challenge it, we will reiterate that it was a poorly-structured plan, pursued in an inappropriate manner.

As we said in August, the plan spends far too much money – estimates of the total cost have ranged from $300 billion to $430 billion – for a country with a national debt of more than $30 trillion.

Chief Justice John Roberts alluded to the high costs as perhaps one reason an executive action was an ill-suited attempt to address the issue without congressional involvement, according to an an article by NPR.org.

Part of the reason the plan is so costly is because too many people would be eligible. A plan that more narrowly targets relief at those in the most dire of circumstances would be far more reasonable.

The plan also fails to address the underlying problem — college tuition has increased too much. A better plan would press colleges and universities to rein in costs, so that our nation and our students can avoid a repeat of this costly expenditure in the future.

And as we said in August, many of these problems would likely be addressed through transparent debate and compromise if, instead of an executive action, our federal legislature wrote and passed bills to send to the president’s desk.

But the plan was not afforded an opportunity for transparent debate and compromise, and as such is too costly, too broad and fails to address important underlying issues. Regardless of what the Supreme Court says: this was a bad idea.