Advice for student loan borrowers amid uncertainty surrounding U.S. Department of Education

In today's Money Watch, we are talking about student loans and the potential impact of President Trump's push to dismantle the department, the U.S. Department of Education. Officials there oversee $1.6 trillion of student loan debt owed by 42 million Americans. For more on what that could mean for you and what could happen next, let's bring in CBS News Business Analyst Jill Schlesinger. Good morning, Jill. Good morning. All right, so what could this disruption of the Department of Education mean for student loan borrows out there? So first of all, it is highly unlikely that the Department of Education could be dismantled. That would take Congress, and right now they don't have the votes to do that. However, I don't want to be alarmist, but I sort of think of this as like, let's get a go-bag for your natural disaster that's around beefing up all the information you need from the Department of Education website. So this is just like, take a deep breath. Here's the information you need to navigate this. Because without critical information, you may not be able to prove that you have been paying for all this time. You want to make sure you have that information. So I'm directing everyone go to studentaid.gov. That's the federal website. And you want to start to actually grab the screenshot of all the information that is there. So that could be the loan amount, how much you paid in. That could be the interest rate. That could be when it's due. And I think these are critical action steps to take to protect yourself. Again, we don't think anything's going to happen, but if that website went down for some intermittent period of time, we want you to be prepared. Let's talk about the worst case and then the best case. To me, the worst case is you've already had your loans forgiven, and somehow they forget about that, and they want you to repay. Well, I think if you've had your loans forgiven, you should actually breathe pretty easily, because it's unlikely they're going to go back. I would take the picture of the actual loan forgiveness, just in case. Again, screenshot is going to be your friend. But I don't think you're going to worry about that. What I think is more pertinent here is if you're in the process of, say, having an income-driven repayment plan, or you're part of the public service loan forgiveness plan. These are plans that are long-term in nature. Some of these are 20, 25-year plans. You want to make sure that you have every payment logged, what is left, the interest rate that is there. And you want to have every bit of proof that you've got a certification. I do work in public service. All of these things will beef up your case in the future, if something bad were to happen. The dream of dreams in any shot of this happening, that the government forgets that you owe them all the money? Yeah, that's not going to happen. They never seem to forget that. It's like your university always finds you wherever you are. They'll find you. So what I do think is keep paying. Go on autopay for every single loan. I don't want people to be the ones who have to think about writing a check. So automatic payments, auto-enrollment. Make sure you're changing your passwords on the website. Two-factor authentication. These are the things that we want people to have in their back pocket. Again, this is your go-bag for your student loan information. We don't want disaster to strike. So we're hoping for the best. Prepare for the worst. Good advice. Jill Solister, thank you very much. Appreciate it.