By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent
President Joe Biden on Wednesday, April 6, announced a pause on federal student loan repayments – extending the break in payments through August 31.
Originally, the freeze was scheduled to expire May 1.
Borrower balances have frozen for more than two years since March 2020. During this time, interest has stopped adding up and collections on defaulted debt have been on hold.
Since taking office, Biden has expanded student loan forgiveness who work in the public sector, those who were defrauded by for-profit colleges and borrowers who are now permanently disabled.
Officials said those initiatives have provided more than $17 billion in relief to borrowers.
Here’s Biden’s official statement:
In January 2021, on my first day in office, I directed the Department of Education to pause federal student loan repayments through September of that year. At the time, our economy was barely growing. Fewer than 1 percent of Americans were fully vaccinated. Millions of Americans were struggling to stay afloat. Because of that pause in repayments, 41 million Americans were able to breathe a little easier during some of the toughest days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Today, America is stronger than we were a year ago—and we will be stronger a year from now than we are today. Thanks to our plan to build the economy from the bottom up and the middle out, the economy has created 7.9 million jobs since I took office—the greatest year of job growth on record. We’ve seen the fastest economic
