A group of senators, including Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), are hoping to make it easier for older Americans to cope with their student debt, but they may face an uphill battle.

Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) introduced a bill with several prominent co-sponsors last week that would prohibit the government from garnishing borrowers’ Social Security disability and retirement checks to pay for defaulted student loans. This marks the second time the Senators have tried to curb this practice; they introduced a similar bill in 2015 was never enacted into law. And given today’s highly partisan lawmaking environment, getting the bill through this time may not be much easier.

“It’s a challenge,” Brown told MarketWatch. Still, he said he’s hopeful lawmakers will respond to growing concern on this topic from constituents. “Senators and House members are hearing about this problem more and more. We’re hearing all kinds of people calling us surprised that [the government] can do this.”

And indeed, the government can. The federal student loan program provides many options borrowers can use to manage their debts, but once borrowers default, the government has extraordinary powers to get its money back, including garnishing tax refunds, Social Security checks and wages.

A growing number of borrowers are losing out on a portion of their Social Security checks to pay back student loans. The number of borrowers over 65 facing this predicament jumped 540% between 2002 and 2015, according to a report released by the Government Accountability Office in December.

Multiple factors explain that spike. For one, over the past several years we’ve witnessed rapid growth in the number of students going to college or returning to school during their career. But perhaps more important, rising college costs over the past few decades means that it’s more likely that an older adult would have taken on a student debt either to pay for their own schooling or that of a child.

The challenges these older or disabled borrowers face paying back their loans is increasingly pushing them toward the financial brink. The 1996 law that allows the feds to garnish Social Security benefits over student loans requires that they leave the borrower with a minimum of $750 in benefits. But that floor hasn’t been adjusted since the 1990s to account for the rising cost of living. In 2015, about 67,300 borrowers over 50 had their benefits garnished below the poverty line from just 8,300 borrowers in 2004.

Brown said he’d like to see lawmakers do more on the front end so that fewer Americans end up in default on their student loans while collecting on Social Security. He suggests reforms, such as allowing borrowers to refinance their federal student loans to lower interest rates, increasing the value of the Pell grant — the money the government provides to low-income students to pay for college — and a larger investment in the nation’s community colleges to make them more affordable for students.

Until then, though, he’s hoping to at least make it easier for student loan borrowers collecting on Social Security to cope with their debts. “Americans work hard and earn their Social Security and it shouldn’t be taken away by student debt,” he said. “It’s just government punishing them and it shouldn’t work that way.”