Roberts pointed to the wide impact and expense of the program, three times saying it would cost “a half-trillion dollars.” The program is estimated to cost $400 billion over 30 years.

“If you’re talking about this in the abstract, I think most casual observers would say if you’re going to give up that much … money. If you’re going to affect the obligations of that many Americans on a subject that’s of great controversy, they would think that’s something for Congress to act on,” Roberts said.

Kavanaugh, suggested that the administration was using an “old law” to unilaterally implement a debt relief program that Congress had rejected. He said the situation was familiar: “In the wake of Congress not authorizing the action, the executive nonetheless doing a massive new program.”

That, he said, “seems problematic.”

[Interestingly, the AP report doesn’t cover much of the questioning from the liberal justices. The only reference to their queries comes nearly at the end, when they note that the liberals joined Amy Coney Barrett in focusing on the issues of standing. There also seems to have been little mention of the basic Article I violation in play with Biden’s self-appropriation of $400 billion. This seems a bit worrisome, at least in this report. — Ed]