The Trump administration is starting to put millions of defaulted student-loan borrowers into collections Monday and threatening to confiscate their wages, tax refunds and federal benefits.
There are some five million borrowers whose loans are in default, many of whom haven’t made regular payments since the pandemic. Millions more are on the cusp of default, according to the Education Department.
President Trump has made student-debt repayment a priority, a reversal from former President Joe Biden, who attempted to forgive swaths of student debt. Though a pandemic payment pause ended in 2023, the Biden administration extended a no-consequences period for those who didn’t pay through the 2024 election.
The Trump administration says it doesn’t have the authority to wipe away student debt and must collect on it.
Restarting loan payments—or penalties for not doing so—would be a burden for many Americans. It could sap their spending on everything from new cars to restaurant meals at an already uncertain economic moment. （有钱买新车、上餐馆，没钱还债？）
Borrowers put student-loan debt on the back burner during the pandemic, and many say they didn’t know they were supposed to start paying again until they saw their credit scores drop in recent months. Companies that handle payments on the government’s behalf say they have worked to keep borrowers updated on what they owe and when.
Loren Linton, an Indiana-based airplane mechanic, canceled a trip to New York recently so he could afford to pay off more of his roughly $11,000 student-loan balance. He said his automatic payments on his loans stopped because of a technical issue, and he realized there was a problem only when his credit score dropped by nearly 300 points in March. （liar, liar, pants on fire)
Linton, 51, has started to work more overtime as he juggles tighter finances, especially because his children are starting as undergraduates themselves in the fall. （几十年了，还欠学债，真是个负责任的人）
“I just feel let down by the whole system because this was supposed to improve our lives, not bring it down,” Linton said. (对，这 system 欠你的）
