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First there was the temporary pandemic payment pause that lasted more than three years. At that time, some student debt was cancelled, and then that cancellation was … cancelled.

Now, any borrowers enrolled in SAVE, which stands for Saving on a Valuable Education and is a Biden-era loan repayment plan that’s ending, are receiving notices that they have to enroll in a new plan. 

One of them is Melissa Dezendorf. She’s based in New Mexico, where she works as a veterinarian — a dream she’s had since she was four years old. She took out loans to cover tuition and living expenses for vet school and graduated from a public university in Louisiana in 2019. Her total debt was $208,000.

“I was grateful for the ability to finance an education that I would not have been able to obtain otherwise,” Dezendorf said.

She budgeted for her monthly student loan payments and took advantage of the pandemic-era payment pause. Then, in 2023, the Biden administration announced the SAVE plan, which it billed as “the most affordable student loan repayment plan ever.” Monthly payments were based on a borrower’s income, and could be as low as $0.

“I jumped on it. I said, ‘This is great. It's going to be a payment that I can afford,’” she said. “‘I'm going to be able to pay off that which I owe.’”

Dezendorf is one of 6 million people enrolled in the SAVE program. She paid about $800 a month under it, though she has stopped making payments while it’s been in legal limbo. SAVE was blocked by a federal appeals court last February. Then, last summer, Congress passed a law to phase the program out by 2028, and earlier this year, the Trump administration reached a settlement ending SAVE early.

This change in policy has made Dezendorf furious.

“I signed up in good faith, trusting that the government would not pull the rug out from under me, and when they did, it was a pretty big blow,” she said.

Lots of borrowers are feeling that blow, and some believe there’s still a way out.

Becki Toth began her life in the same western Pennsylvania township where Giant Eagle is headquartered. She’s bought her groceries there her whole life.

“I've always had good experiences there, and they've always been really close to my house,” she said.

Giant Eagle is a regional grocery chain that’s been around for 90 years. It has about 200 stores, mostly in parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania.

While Toth has stayed loyal, other folks have left — not just Giant Eagle, but the whole genre of traditional supermarket that includes Safeway, Albertsons, Publix and Kroger.

”That's a format that has been losing ground for quite some time in the food retail landscape in the U.S., and at a pretty dramatic rate,” said Ricky Volpe, a professor of agribusiness at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

Volpe said today, it’s mostly baby boomers who shop at these supermarkets. He says they went from commanding about 80% of the market in the U.S. in the 1990s to about half today. And it’s still falling.

Case in point: Giant Eagle is now the second-largest chain in Cleveland and Pittsburgh, ceding the top grocer title to Walmart. The primary reason: Walmart’s cheaper.

“My vat of iced coffee that I started buying like four years ago was $5 when I started buying it, and now at my Giant Eagle it is $7,” Toth said. “It's stunning. And what's even more stunning is that if I get it at Walmart, it's still $5.”

Toth will shell out the extra $2, because Walmart is half an hour away, and Giant Eagle is down the street.

“I just don't want to spend my one wild and precious life driving to Walmart,” she said. “If they were side by side, I probably would go for the cheaper option because, I mean, it's 2026, and I teach musical theater for a living. So I'm not rolling in it.”

The traditional supermarket is losing ground with two groups: the price-sensitive shoppers of Walmart and Aldi, and the quality-conscious folks who go to Whole Foods and Sprouts.

“The only avenue towards growth in that sector has been through mergers and acquisitions,” Volpe said.

Kevin Warsh was on Capitol Hill Tuesday in the first of two days of semiannual congressional hearings on monetary policy.

The Federal Reserve is required to report to Congress twice a year by the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978, often called the Humphrey-Hawkins Act after the bill’s original sponsors, Hubert Humphrey and Augustus Hawkins.

“It is the case that we always get change when there's a crisis,” said Martha Olney, an economic historian and professor emerita at UC Berkeley.

In the 1970s, the U.S. economy was experiencing stagflation. In 1974, the year that Humphrey-Hawkins was introduced, inflation hit double digits, real GDP shrank, and the unemployment rate rose.

“Congress, in light of how bad economic conditions had been in the 1970s, set some new expectations and rules for the Federal Reserve,” said Olney. “The Humphrey-Hawkins Act says, ‘OK, it's not just the federal government's responsibility to take care of employment and inflation; it's the central bank's responsibility.’”

That explicitly enshrined the dual mandate — balancing stable prices and maximum employment — as the Fed’s responsibility.

But the legislation Humphrey and Hawkins originally proposed had much bigger ambitions.