Mike Saunders, the legal director at Veterans Education Success, said he had been surprised to learn about the Education Department freeze, saying the advocacy group had been “under the impression that they were automatically forgiving loans since the middle of September.”

About a year ago, Saunders’ group learned through a Freedom of Information Act request that more than 20,000 of 42,000 veterans eligible for debt forgiveness were in default of their loans. “When we saw those numbers, something jumped off the page,” he said.

Read the full story at CBS News, “After scrutiny, U.S. again forgiving student debt for disabled veterans” published November 22, 2019.