The pandemic relief bill passed in the spring of 2020 initially suspended interest and payments for roughly 40 million federal student loan borrowers. That relief was extended multiple times through executive action by the Trump and Biden administrations, but it had been set to expire at the end of January. A wide range of congressional Democrats urged the White House to avoid sending student loan bills to millions of Americans in the coming weeks in the midst of another wave of Covid cases.
Some progressives had warned that restarting student loan payments early next year would spell political disaster for Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections.
Biden administration officials for weeks had insisted that the Education Department would resume collecting student loans on Feb. 1. The department had been sending notices to borrowers that their loans would soon come due after nearly two years of pandemic relief. And the administration had also been looking at ways to soften the blow of payments restarting for struggling borrowers.
But in recent days, the White House said they were reassessing the matter.
“They were pretty adamant about not doing it. I think us saying it’s ok to change course based on changing circumstances is completely ok and maybe shows real leadership (and pointing to change of course re testing kits) helped prove the point,” one of the sources said, who received a phone call from a White House staffer before the announcement.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement that his agency would be focused on “ensuring a smooth return to repayment” for borrowers in May.
“This additional extension of the repayment pause will provide critical relief to borrowers who continue to face financial hardships as a result of the pandemic, and will allow our Administration to assess the impacts of Omicron on student borrowers,” Cardona said.
The pressure on Biden to further extend the student loan relief came not just from progressives who are seeking wide-scale cancellation of debt across the board but also from vulnerable House Democrats worried about their constituents receiving student loan bills in an election year.
All nine House Democrats from Pennsylvania sent a letter to Biden earlier on Wednesday seeking an extension of the relief, including two lawmakers—Reps. Susan Wild and Matt Cartwright—who are in vulnerable seats. The state’s Democratic senator, Bob Casey, told McClatchy last week that he was also in favor of extending the relief.
Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), the chair of the House education committee, who has not pushed for the same widespread debt cancellation as others in the Democratic caucus, also applauded the extension of the student loan relief.
“As we have seen during similar periods throughout [the] pandemic, the rapid spread of the Omicron variant poses a significant risk to the financial health of workers and their families,” Scott said. “Extending student loan relief will provide a financial lifeline to borrowers during this health crisis.”