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Sen. Bernie Sanders is the ranking member of the Senate committee on education.
Matt McClain/The Washington Post/Getty Images
Education Secretary Linda McMahon received a litany of demands this week from Sen. Bernie Sanders and 10 Senate Democrats, who criticized the way her department quietly cut off access to loan forgiveness for some eligible borrowers.
The letter, dated Aug. 18, follows the department’s decision in July to indefinitely freeze debt relief for borrowers on the Income-Based Repayment Plan and calls for the Office of Federal Student Aid to clarify why the benefit was put on hold. Department of Education officials say they were required by a court order to put the pause in place while they recalculate borrowers’ progress toward debt relief.
The senators disagreed, calling the decision “outraging” and arguing that it was done by choice. They add that Congress did not receive proper notification. Rather, lawmakers learned about the freeze through constituents who, when applying for forgiveness, were told by their loan servicers that such applications weren’t being processed.
If the freeze persists, the Democrats say it will “create unnecessary confusion” and prevent thousands of borrowers who have made payments for 20 years or more from accessing relief.
“At a time when Americans across the country are struggling to meet the costs of health care, food, housing, child care and other basic needs, it is unacceptable for the Trump administration to take any action that delays or denies legally mandated debt relief to borrowers that have been in repayment for two decades or more,” the senators wrote in a news release about the letter.
They demanded that the Education Department to resume the forgiveness to which borrowers “are entitled under law.” They also provided a list of 11 questions about the situation and requested responses by Aug. 30. Among other things, the lawmakers want more information about whether there is a timeline for when loan forgiveness will resume and what has been communicated to loan servicers about the situation.
The senators also argued that the department needs to act quickly to restart forgiveness because some borrowers are running out of time to take advantage of a tax break. After this year, relieved borrowers will have to pay taxes on any forgiven student loans.
“The department already has a significant processing backlog for income-driven repayment plans and forgiveness programs, and that backlog will continue to grow as long as the department has this pause in place,” the letter reads. “Unless the department acts quickly … borrowers who should receive forgiveness before the tax exemption expires could face significant tax bills on debt relief that should have been granted to them without penalty.”
Who Wrote the Letter?
Signees include: Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
About 2.1 million borrowers who hold about $131.5 billion in loans are enrolled in IBR, according to the Federal Student Aid data center for the third quarter of 2025. Under the plan, eligible borrowers can make monthly payments limited to 10 or 15 percent of their discretionary income. Then, after a borrower has completed 240 or 300 payments, whatever balance remains should be forgiven.
Unlike the other income-driven repayment plans, IBR is technically not subject to a court order blocking loan forgiveness. However, the department says that the injunction, issued in February, requires the agency to change how it calculates when a borrower is eligible for forgiveness for all plans. That’s why debt relief is temporarily on hold, according to a department spokesperson.
Biden-era regulations that created the newest and most generous repayment plan, known as SAVE, allowed borrowers in any income-driven repayment plan to count periods of forbearance in which a borrower doesn’t have to make payments toward the total number of payments required for relief, Deputy Press Secretary Ellen Keast said. But the injunction blocks that forbearance-recognition policy, she argued.
“IBR discharges will resume as soon as the department is able to establish the correct payment count. For any borrower that makes a payment after they [become] eligible for forgiveness, the department will refund overpayments when the discharges resume,” Keast said in an email to Inside Higher Ed. (She did not directly acknowledge Sanders’s letter or say whether the department will respond to his questions.)
But Sanders and the 10 Democrats questioned this reasoning, noting that the injunction has been in place for months and the halt on loan forgiveness only started this summer.
“They’re using the SAVE injunction as a justification for this action, but it is certainly not one that we see as necessary,” one of Sanders’s policy aides told Inside Higher Ed. “There is not a court ruling that demands that they take that step, and certainly not as it relates to IBR.”
The aide also noted that their boss and Democratic lawmakers had been receiving complaints from borrowers for months and had asked the department multiple times if loan forgiveness had been paused, only to be told it had not. It wasn’t until July, after a story from Forbes confirmed the allegations, that the department acknowledged the freeze.
“We’d been receiving reports from constituents, which had conflicted with information that we’re receiving from the department directly,” she said. “Following the publication of that article, we reached back out to the department, then they finally confirmed to us that IBR forgiveness had indeed been paused and was not being processed.”
