ED Pauses Involuntary Debt Collection

The Department of Education announced Friday that it will temporarily pause its plans to garnish the wages of defaulted borrowers, citing the need to implement other “major student loan repayment reforms.”

The pause, which does not have an end date, came as a surprise to many, as Education Secretary Linda McMahon has stressed for months that collecting debt from defaulted borrowers is a major priority for the Trump administration. 

She made a point in May to remind colleges of their role in ensuring borrowers repay their loans. As recently as Jan. 7, the department warned defaulted borrowers that it would be escalating involuntary collections from being deducted solely from government benefits to being pulled directly from their paychecks. 

But now, as Under Secretary Nicholas Kent explained in a news release, all involuntary collection has been paused. In the meantime, he said, department officials will be working to implement the changes to loan repayment policy made under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

These sweeping changes—which reduce and streamline the number of income-driven repayment plan options and provide defaulted borrowers with a second chance to attempt loan rehabilitation—were clarified and approved by an advisory committee in November, but they have not been put out for public comment or finalized. (The new policies are supposed to begin July 1.)

So delaying involuntary collections, Kent said, will allow the regulations to take effect and give borrowers who have already attempted rehabilitation a chance to try again.

“The Department determined that involuntary collection efforts such as Administrative Wage Garnishment and the Treasury Offset Program will function more efficiently and fairly after the Trump Administration implements significant improvements to our broken student loan system,” he said.

Advocates for borrowers largely praised the announcement, saying wage garnishment would have been “economically reckless” amid a “growing affordability crisis.” But taxpayer advocates rebuked the decision, calling it a “political giveaway” and saying that after a years-long delay in debt collection during the Biden administration, there’s “no good reason for the president to back down on efforts to actually begin collecting debt payments again.”