Dem
47
GOP
53
Joe Biden tried and failed to cancel a lot of student debt. He managed to cancel a bit around the edges, but the Supreme Court ruled that with a few exceptions, only Congress can cancel student debt. So is Donald Trump pursuing debt cancellation so he can be a hero to young voters? Absolutely not. Rather the opposite. Starting in January he is going to go after collecting delinquent loans much more vigorously. The plan is to garnish the wages of the 5½ million people who are behind in their payments.
For the treasury, that is probably a good thing, but politically, maybe not so much. The people whose paychecks are (partially) seized are likely to notice and may not think kindly of Trump next November. Their right to vote will not be garnished and debtors prison is not in fashion right now. If he didn't want to cancel any debt, he could have at least given people more time to get caught up on their payments or spread the payments out over a longer time period, but he is a mean and venal person. Tough luck, kids.
Or maybe not. Garnishing wages is not so easy. First, by law, the government must give people 30 days notice, to give them a chance to catch up on payments or request a hearing before a judge. Judges are busy people and have other things to do. Second, they have to find the person's employer (if any), which could take some time and serve notice to the employer to withhold up to 15% of a person's net pay and forward it to the government. Large employers, say Walmart or McDonalds, will certainly try to comply with government demands, but they probably don't have large departments set up for this and may not be able to quickly hire and train enough new people to handle compliance, even if their lawyers tell them they must.
The intention is to begin with a small group of defaultees and then expand it over time. Furthermore, the law states that a targeted individual must be allowed to keep 30x the minimum wage each week. Since the minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, that is $218/wk or about $980/mo. For someone making less than this net after deductions, garnishment is not allowed. Many people who are in default are probably not earning so much, otherwise they wouldn't be in default, so this could be an issue with some people. Finding the people, contacting the employer, finding out what they earn, and complying with the law is a lot of work. Many of the Department of Education's employees have been fired. Who will do the work? What could possibly go wrong? (V)