Lending.gov Bill Picks Up Traction
Government Executive covered the Federal Loan Systems Modernization Act as a structural shift, not just a tech upgrade: agencies would face a clear choice to migrate to the shared platform or justify staying on their own. The bill would designate a lead agency as the initial Provider and operational host of the Platform.
The piece surfaced the execution questions that matter most: who runs the platform, how GSA sequences migration in its six-month plan, and how committee oversight shifts. One factor adding urgency: agencies keep independently procuring new lending and AI tools, risking another generation of incompatibility if Congress doesn’t act.
Read it here.
GAO’s SBA-IRS Report, In the Author’s Own Words
ACT-IAC Federal Insights Exchange: A Recap
ACT-IAC’s March 25 Federal Insights Exchange at CGI Federal convened The Future of Federal Financial Management and Credit.
Allocore’s Jon Remedios moderated a conversation with David Lebryk, former Fiscal Assistant Secretary at Treasury, and Doug Criscitello, Executive Director of the Center for USA Lending.
The bottom line: federal financial management is operating aycdasoit a scale and complexity way different from what its systems were designed for, and modernization is as much about stewardship, trust, and scaling what works as it is about technology.
New Research: When the Federal Government Lends
A new paper from María Pía Olivero of Swarthmore builds a high-frequency dataset of federal direct loans from 1998 to 2024 and tests whether they crowd out or crowd in private lending.
Her finding: a 1 percent increase in federal credit loosens private lenders’ liquidity constraints by roughly 28 percent, equivalent to an extra $21.7 billion in lending for the average U.S. bank.
Agriculture, education, energy, and housing programs show the strongest positive spillovers, with borrowers effectively using federal loans as “intangible collateral” for private credit. SBA, the Federal Financing Bank, and Ex-Im show evidence of crowding out.
So it appears not all federal credit programs behave the same way.
Check out the paper.
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$1.7 Trillion in Student Loans, Who’s Going to Manage Them?
In this episode of The Center for USA Lending’s The Lending Brief, sponsored by Allocore, we’re joined by Kyle Shohfi, an education policy analyst at the Congressional Research Service, for an inside look at the federal student loan portfolio and the seismic policy shifts reshaping it.
From the four-year repayment pause to a surge in defaults, jumping from 3.7 million to 6 million borrowers in a single quarter, Kyle breaks down what the numbers really mean for American borrowers and taxpayers.
He also weighs in on the administration’s plan to transfer student loan administration from the Department of Education to Treasury, the statutory hurdles standing in the way, and why the true cost of federal credit programs remains so poorly understood, even on Capitol Hill.
Building Coalitions to Modernize Federal Credit
In the Spring 2026 Journal of Government Financial Management, Doug Criscitello teams up with Jay Hurt, Kate Aaby, and Kelsey Do to argue that modernizing the $5.1 trillion federal credit enterprise is not primarily a technology problem. It is a relationship problem.
With 138 credit programs spread across 20 agencies, no single entity owns the full life cycle, and modernization stalls not from lack of will but from misaligned incentives, uneven technical capacity, and limited mechanisms for shared problem-solving.
The authors warn that agency-specific AI deployments risk hardening today’s silos into permanent structural features, and they lay out three strategies for durable public-private coalitions: align incentives around shared outcomes, deploy shared infrastructure, and build learning loops that translate pilots into system-wide practice.
Read it here.
The FY 2027 Budget. Analytical Perspectives: The Credit and Insurance Chapter
The FY 2027 Analytical Perspectives dropped, and the Credit and Insurance chapter is required reading. A few numbers worth flagging: the Direct Loan portfolio sits at $1.44 trillion, with the Working Families Tax Cut Act restructuring student lending through a new Repayment Assistance Plan and the phase-out of legacy IDR plans by 2028.
FHA’s Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund held $1.6 trillion in mortgages outstanding with an 11.47 percent capital ratio, and first-time buyers made up 83 percent of FHA purchase loans. The GSEs have paid $301 billion in dividends to Treasury against $191.5 billion invested, with no mention of conservatorship exit.
FSA loan obligations jumped 23 percent in 2025 as farm margins tightened for the third straight year. SBA’s 7(a) delivered $33 billion in guarantees. The Center for USA Lending will track program and funding levels as the budget process progresses.
Read the chapter here.