Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrapped up her line of questioning of Francis Brooke, President Trump’s nominee for Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, with a blunt verdict after he repeatedly dodged straightforward questions about the portfolio he would oversee.
Warren opened the July 16 confirmation hearing by outlining the stakes. Trump had shifted the management of defaulted student loans from the Education Department to the Treasury, a move she described not as an effort to assist borrowers but as a political maneuver.
The consequence, in her view, was “the largest student loan default crisis in recorded history.”
She then turned to Brooke with what she called a basic question. “How many federal student loan borrowers are currently in default under the Trump administration?”
Brooke deflected, describing Treasury’s role as a “fiscal agent.” Warren cut him off. “I asked a very easy question,” she said. “How many people are you now dealing with?”
“I don’t know the exact number,” Brooke admitted, “but it’s more than it should be.”
Warren pressed further. “What about a rough figure?”
“I’d be glad for you to share the number,” Brooke replied.
“You don’t have a rough number,” Warren said flatly. “Do you have a general regional estimate? Some sense of what planet this is on?”
Warren then answered her own question. “There are 9 million people in default right now whose financial lives will be in your hands, and you don’t even know who they are or where they are.”
Warren then walked Brooke through precisely what is at stake for those 9 million borrowers.
Under federal law, she explained, Treasury has the authority to garnish hundreds of dollars per month directly from Social Security benefits, a tool known as “offsets” that the government has used to deduct more than $1 billion from Americans’ Social Security benefits over the years.
The situation is especially dire for older borrowers, Warren noted, since seniors with student loans are about twice as likely to be in default as younger borrowers.
“So, since this is all under Treasury’s jurisdiction and part of what you want to lead,” Warren said, turning back to Brooke, she wanted to know how many seniors could face those cuts under his watch.
“I do not,” Brooke answered.
“450,000,” she said.
She eventually asked whether Brooke could commit to shielding seniors from having their Social Security benefits offset to cover defaulted student loan debt, a power currently in Treasury’s hands. Brooke again refused to offer a direct answer, proposing only to “continue to work” with her office.
“I’m just looking for the half a million seniors,” Warren said. “Just a commitment that they can count on receiving that Social Security payment month after month after month, without Donald Trump taking a big bite out of it, and I can’t even get that from this nominee.”
She closed without hesitation. “I’ll be a no on you.”
