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Public commenter says 30 years of student debt, wage garnishment left her unable to save for family
Summary
A public commenter told the meeting she has been paying student loans since the 1990s, described repeated defaults and wage garnishment, and said compounding interest and recurring garnishments have prevented her from saving for family activities and worried her about her grandchildren's college prospects.
A public commenter told the meeting she has been paying student loans since 1997 and that the debt has been a persistent burden for roughly 30 years. "I've been in and out of default," she said, calling the experience "a nightmare."
She described having her wages garnished while earning low pay. "They did garnish my wages," she said, adding she had left pay stubs with meeting organizers as evidence. The commenter said she was "making minimum wage" at the time of the garnishment.
The speaker said she borrowed "almost $40,000 to go to school back in the nineties," and added that "the interest just compounds," framing the loan balance growth as a central factor in long-term repayment difficulty.
She described how the prospect of garnishments restarting constrains household spending and planning. "When you're trying to plan for the future ... if we wanna take our grandkids to an amusement park or something, I kinda feel like, you know, we're not gonna be able to do something special like this when these garnishments restart," she said, later adding, "it breaks my heart."
The transcript records this testimony but does not record any formal response, motion, or vote tied to the comments in the excerpt provided.
