The Trump administration on Thursday announced plans to shift the federal government’s $1.7 trillion student loan portfolio to the Treasury Department, the latest in a series of bureaucratic moves aimed at dismantling the Education Department.
The federal student loan program has been plagued with problems, including a botched rollout of a new application form that delayed its availability for the last two years of the Biden administration.
Last year, President Trump ordered the Education Department, which has managed financial aid for decades, to move the student loan program to the Small Business Administration. An Education Department official on Thursday said that moving the program to the Treasury Department made more sense, and that officials were in lock-step on that decision.
Mr. Trump has made it a priority to shut down the Education Department, but such a move could only be accomplished with an act of Congress. With little action from Republicans in charge of the House, the administration has been dismantling the department in a piecemeal way.
The interagency agreement announced on Thursday was the 10th such move by the Education Department in the past year, a department official said. Last November, the department moved the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Office of Postsecondary Education to the Labor Department.
Michael C. Bender is a Times correspondent in Washington.
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