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If you have   student loans   in 2019, you also have a somewhat distressingly large number of different ways to pay them back. Besides the   standard repayment   plan , in which the government calculates a monthly bill based on what you owe, there’s a graduated plan for people who want to pay more later, which is somehow different from what the system calls paying-as-you-earn and income-contingent repayment. In other words, deciding to take on debt for what   hopefully will be a worthwhile degree   is just the first in a series of complicated decisions that may dictate what much of your adult financial life looks like. Now Lamar Alexander, the Republican chairman of the Senate committee that deals with education issues, is pushing a proposal—one that stands a non-zero chance of passing—promising to condense repayment alternatives into just two clear options. But it could also let the government dip into borrowers’s paychecks, making the already-...