President Trump’s Department of Education pausing its plans to reduce people’s Social Security benefits if they have defaulted on their student loans, according to a department spokeswoman. However, the department said wage garnishment will begin later this summer. Here with more, we’ve got Yahoo Finance senior columnist, Kerry Hannon. Kerry, what do we know about this?

Hi, Brad. Uh, yes, so this morning, uh, a Department of Education spokeswoman told me that, in fact, yes, they have put a pause on any, um, garnishment of Social Security, you know, any offsets for now. Um, but they said they will do outreach during this time to people who are in default, and those are folks who are 270 days they’ve missed payments, uh, to help them find a repayment program that will work for them. So, uh, seniors who are in default can expect to hear from them. Um, but they did say, she did say that wage garnishment, in fact, uh, will begin later this summer. So, um, this is a big issue, and it got a lot of, uh, a lot of attention, uh, when they announced they were going to start, uh, taking 15% from people’s Social Security monthly benefit for those in default in order to repay these loans. And, and you know, something like, you know, so many seniors really depend on the reliant on that monthly check, so it was quite startling, and it, so it’s rattling, of course, but they have paused it for now.

Kerry, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has new data that shows recent phone service restrictions around the Social Security Administration will require over 100, or 1.93 million additional trips to field offices each year. And for many seniors, these offices are far away. Can you tell us about some of the findings there?

Oh, yeah, Brad, and this is crazy. I mean, they started all of this stuff earlier this spring, making changes to what people can and cannot do in terms of making changes to their Social Security accounts online and by telephone. They’ve, they’ve kind of backed away from some of the things, but the one thing that they are definitely moving forward with that is, if you need to make changes to your bank information, you and you do not have access to internet, uh, then you are going to not be able to do that by telephone. You have to come to a, to a field office to make that change in your direct deposit information or your banking information. This is very concerning for many seniors because, uh, there, you know, this would require to get to a field office a round trip of an hour or so, and in fact, there’s so many cutbacks in Social Security field offices right now that they’re understaffed as it is. It can take 30 days to make an appointment, but the, the other issue is that there’s something, uh, the Center, uh, on Budget and Policy Priorities said that a quarter of seniors do live an hour away from the field office, and that 8 million, uh, seniors have disability or medical issues that make it difficult for them to travel, as well as over 600 million, over 6 million do not drive. So, not having access, they used to be able to easily do this by telephone, and so this is an issue if you don’t have internet service, which many, uh, seniors who live in rural communities don’t have access to, uh, uh, good Wi-Fi. And, and essentially, this, this really, uh, creates an extra stumbling block for them.

Kerry, appreciate the breakdown on both of these stories.