The current tax reform discussions look to make it even worse be removing some of the current breaks for students paying off debt [1]. There was some talk last summer about extending the current $5200 tuition exemption as an employer benefit to include tuition repayment [2]. I guess that's now off the table. I haven't seen the math anywhere, but it sure seems like it would be cheaper to give tax breaks for paying off loans then to allow them to be defaulted on on forgiven in the case of government workers.
[1] http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/15/pf/college/tax-reform-paying... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/17/student-loan-debt-why-employ...