The Government’s Annual Student Loan Report Required by Law Never Came Out

The Trump administration hasn’t been informing Congress about the struggles facing student loan borrowers, as it is statutorily required to do — even as it ends a Biden-era program that lowered student loan payments to as little as $0 for low-income borrowers.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released a slate of statutorily mandated reports in the final days of 2025 — in some cases as many as six months later than they’re usually released. A report on student loan borrowers, which in the past has indicated borrowers’ difficulties with loan servicers, billing and customer service issues, and updates around loan relief programs, wasn’t among the reports released.

Democratic lawmakers, some of whom have been requesting information on the reports, say the delays are complicating Congress’ work overseeing the agency.

Sen. Ruben Gallego, who sits on the Banking Committee, said the CFPB’s on-time publication of reports is important for Congress to fulfill its own obligations.

“That allows us to take serious our oversight responsibilities, potentially change laws if we have to, to answer to some of the gross excesses that we see from some of these companies,” Gallego said of lending companies.

The reports are required on different timelines, annually, semiannually or biennially, alongside semiannual testimony by the CFPB director at congressional hearings. Acting Director Russ Vought did not testify before the Senate Banking Committee nor the House Energy and Commerce Committee in 2025.

After publication, a spokesperson for CFPB told NOTUS: “The report is done and release is imminent.”

The missing student loan borrowers report could prove particularly critical as the Trump administration moves to end Biden’s SAVE plan, which reduced payments and expedited student loan forgiveness, and begins to garnish the wages, tax refunds and Social Security benefits of defaulted borrowers. Notices to the first 1,000 defaulted borrowers go out this week.

The CFPB’s student loan ombudsman post, which compiles the annual mandated report to Congress, appears to remain empty since the previous ombudsman, Julia Barnard, left the agency in October, according to her LinkedIn account.

The reports that were released were crammed into the final weeks of December, with four published on Dec. 30, according to a NOTUS review.

The reports — which cover the consumer credit card market, fair lending practices, and the agency’s financial literacy work, among other topics — provide a window into the risks consumers face in the market, giving lawmakers data they use to legislate and keeping Congress up to date on the work of the agency.

What has been released has also faced some scrutiny. Former Deputy Director of Fair Lending Anna-Marie Tabor raised questions about the CFPB’s fair lending report, which she said detailed directives that require changes to the law governing discrimination in lending.

“In addition to flouting the CFPB’s duties, these statements also reveal the extent to which any rationales given in the rulemaking process are pretext for politically-motivated abdication of the agency’s statutory obligations,” Tabor, a law professor at the University of Massachusetts, wrote in an email to NOTUS.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee who led the CFPB’s creation in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, castigated Vought for failing to submit the reports in a timely manner in a Dec. 7 letter.

“These failures are only the latest indication that you are attempting to illegally dismantle the CFPB and sideline the financial cop that has returned more than $21 billion to families cheated by big banks and giant corporations,” Warren wrote.

Since assuming his post as the acting director in February, Vought has attempted mass layoffs at the CFPB, ordered staff to stop supervision and enforcement work and said publicly that the agency may close — directives that are now being litigated in court.