450,000 Seniors Over 62 in Default Face Social Security Garnishment, Pushing Fixed-Income Retirees Below Poverty

More than 450,000 federal student loan borrowers aged 62 and older are in default and receiving Social Security benefits, making them subject to the Treasury Offset Program which can garnish up to 15% of their Social Security payments, with the only protection being a $750/month floor that is well below the federal poverty level for most states. Why it matters: the number of borrowers aged 60+ has grown six-fold since 2004 while their outstanding debt grew 19-fold to over $125 billion, so seniors on fixed incomes who took out Parent PLUS loans for children or borrowed for their own late-career education face garnishment of their primary (or only) income source, so the $750/month floor leaves garnished seniors with income below the 2025 federal poverty guideline of $1,313/month for a single person, so affected seniors must choose between loan payments and medications, food, or housing, so the federal government is effectively impoverishing its oldest and most vulnerable borrowers to collect on debts that negative amortization has often inflated far beyond original principal. The structural root cause is that student loans are nearly impossible to discharge in bankruptcy (requiring the Brunner test's 'undue hardship' standard, which courts interpret so strictly that even disabled and elderly borrowers rarely qualify), and there is no statute of limitations on federal student loan collections, unlike virtually every other form of consumer debt.