According to Reuters, on Wednesday, the Biden administration is will announce an extension of the student loan repayment pause through August 31.
For two years, since the COVID-19 pandemic, the repayment moratorium has been extended five times since it was first put in place in March 2020 by the Trump administration.
The current pause was set to expire on May 1.
With employees returning to office, unemployment down, and the country slowly returning to a pre-pandemic existence—despite positive viral spikes across the country—reports of new coronavirus cases in the United States are still declining, though the pace of improvement has slowed significantly, according to the New York Times.
This might be the last extension.
Nearly 41 million borrowers have benefited from a freeze on interest accruals and about 27 million borrowers have not had to pay their monthly bills since the forbearance began, Reuters reports. The freeze saves 41 million borrowers about $5 billion a month, the Education Department has said previously.
The extension is another disappointment from Biden’s constituents that expected complete loan forgiveness, especially as the return of payments after more than two years does appear that the president is going back on his vow to forgive at least $10,000 in student debt for all. That belief could also be damaging for both Biden and the democrats at the polls come November.
A recent poll found, nearly 66 percent of likely voters are in support of the president forgiving student debt, with more than 70 percent of Latino and Black voters in favor.
As recently as March 31, dozens of Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to the president urging him to extend the pause through year’s end and “to provide meaningful student debt cancellation.”