Key facts
- More than 30 Democratic lawmakers, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, sent the letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon.
- The lawmakers asked the Education Department to respond to eight state student-loan ombudsmen's recommendations on repayment and forgiveness programs.
- The ombudsmen cited a borrower who spent thousands of dollars on payments their tracker showed as counting toward forgiveness when they did not.
- The Education Department has said it has fixed repayment errors as they arose, according to the report.
More than 30 Democratic lawmakers led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Ayanna Pressley sent a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon on November 5, 2026, asking the department to respond to a set of recommendations from state student-loan ombudsmen, Business Insider reported.
The lawmakers wrote that failures in federal student loan servicing have repeatedly posed severe and costly problems for American families, according to the report. The letter, which Business Insider said it viewed first, followed a request from eight state student-loan ombudsmen that called on congressional leaders and the Education Department to address what they described as systemic failures in the administration of income-driven repayment plans and loan forgiveness programs.
The ombudsmen cited a borrower whose tracker toward student-loan forgiveness displayed payments that did not count, writing that this led the borrower to mistakenly believe she was on track for forgiveness and to spend thousands of dollars on payments that ultimately do not count toward forgiveness, according to the report. The recommendations included bolstering the complaint-resolution process and improving loan-forgiveness tracking.
The issues the lawmakers raised included servicers incorrectly billing borrowers for higher payments than they owed, improperly accruing interest on balances, and delaying the processing of relief through income-driven repayment plans, the report said.
The Trump administration has maintained that its student-loan changes are intended to simplify a complex repayment system and curb excessive borrowing, and the department has said it has fixed repayment errors as they arose, according to the report. Trump's repayment overhaul took effect on July 1, 2026, after which borrowers have reported a range of errors and confusion with their account statuses, the report said.
Some of those challenges have led to litigation; most recently, the American Federation of Teachers sued the Education Department over stalled debt relief for borrowers pursuing Public Service Loan Forgiveness, according to the report. The lawmakers wrote that the challenges borrowers have faced existed before Trump's repayment changes took effect, and the report cited a Government Accountability Office report finding that the department stopped monitoring servicers for accuracy and call quality after staffing reductions.