HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Feds Dock Social Security Checks For Unpaid Student Loans: More retirees are falling behind on student debt, and Uncle Sam is coming after their benefits. “From January through August 6, the government reduced the size of roughly 115,000 retirees’ Social Security checks on those grounds. That’s nearly double the pace of the department’s enforcement in 2011; it’s up from around 60,000 cases in all of 2007 and just 6 cases in 2000.”