Lawmakers Say Student-Loan Repayment Problems Are Growing and Demand Answers

• Democratic lawmakers are urging the Education Department to confront student-loan repayment problems.

• They are responding to a request from state ombudsmen to investigate student-loan servicing failures.

• Those failures have included billing mistakes, delays in debt relief, and improper interest accrual.

Student-loan repayment problems are growing, and lawmakers are seeking answers.

More than 30 Democratic lawmakers, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, sent a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon about the difficulties borrowers have encountered as they navigate President Donald Trump's repayment changes.

The problems cited in the letter included servicers billing borrowers for payments higher than what they owed, incorrectly adding interest to balances, and slowing the processing of relief under income-driven repayment plans.

The letter, first seen by Business Insider, was a response to a request from eight state student-loan ombudsmen who asked congressional leaders and the Education Department to address systemic failures in the handling of IDR plans and loan-forgiveness programs.

The ombudsmen also pointed to a borrower whose forgiveness tracker showed payments that should not have counted.

That, they wrote, led the borrower to wrongly believe she was on course for forgiveness, prompting her to spend thousands of dollars on payments that would not ultimately count toward that goal.

The lawmakers asked the Education Department to act on the ombudsmen's recommendations, including strengthening the complaint-resolution process and improving loan-forgiveness tracking.

They wrote that failures in federal student loan servicing have repeatedly created severe and expensive problems for American families.

The Trump administration has said its student-loan changes are meant to simplify a complicated repayment system and limit excessive borrowing, and the department has said it has corrected repayment errors as they emerged.

Since the administration's repayment overhaul took effect, borrowers have reported a wide range of errors and confusion about their account status. Some of the issues have already led to lawsuits; most recently, the American Federation of Teachers sued the Education Department over delayed debt relief for borrowers seeking Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

Even so, the lawmakers said the troubles borrowers have faced existed before those repayment changes began. They noted that the administration cut Education Department staffing and reduced oversight, and a Government Accountability Office report found that the department stopped monitoring servicers for accuracy and call quality after those staffing reductions.

The push for stronger borrower protections follows a broader Democratic shift that gave the party control of both chambers of Congress. Democratic lawmakers have said they plan to increase oversight of the student-loan industry and resist the administration's efforts to dismantle the Education Department.