On Thursday, the Education Department (ED) announced another step in the plan to dismantle itself by outsourcing its functions to other agencies. The responsibilities of the Office of Federal Student Aid—which manages the federal student loan portfolio—will go to the US Treasury Department.
Some have been understandably skeptical of these “interagency agreements” (IAAs). If your goal is to diminis...
The article presents a cautiously optimistic assessment of the ED’s move to transfer federal student loan management to the Treasury Department. The core narrative relies heavily on a ‘trade-down’ argument: replacing a perceived bureaucratic mess within ED with Treasury's operational capacity, framed as a pragmatic solution rather than a fundamental shift in policy intent. The STEELMAN effectively argues for leveraging Treasury’s existing network and data – the IRS’s income records – to better u...