January 16, 2026
The Department of Education is backing down. They announced late tonight that when it comes to your defaulted student loans – they are aren’t actually going to start garnishing your wages. At least not yet.
So all that hoopla and all those threats over the last six months from the Education Department and the Secretary of Education saying the department was going to start send letters to borrowers in January whose loans were defaulted and they were going to start garnishing their wages – is now – not happening. The notice says this is just a “temporary delay” in the garnishment.
So why are they backing off? Well according to this announcement the Department of Education says it’s because they are really busy trying to implement all the major changes that congress made to student loan repayment programs in the Big Beautiful bill. By law those changes need to be rolled out in July of 2026. Literally – that bill is changing almost everything. It eliminated repayment plans that you may actually have right now it changes the amount of money you can borrow and who can borrow money… I could go on and on about all the changes…but let’s just say it’s going to be a major overhaul. So the notice says the department is working on that.
Now what they don’t say in this notice is – the president gutted the staff of the Department of Education. Right? He wants to abolish the department all together – but since that can’t happen without congress – instead – he fired almost half the staff. So the employees who are left are obligated to overhaul the entire student loan apparatus on about half the staff as when President Biden was in office. And obviously garnishing your wages takes the Department of Education staff time and effort to implement, it’s not a quick and easy process so this appears like they’re having to pick and choose what they work on…and obviously they’re picking the law that congress passed.
Now the letter ends by saying this delay in wage garnishment will give borrowers more time to bring their loans into good standing so the garnishments are not necessary. There is a link included so you can look at the ways to do that
Read the notice from the Department of Education here.
