Advocates Caution that Payment Pause Should be Extended Until Student Loan System is Fixed

April 5, 2022 — Press Release

April 5, 2022

WASHINGTON – Today, in response to reports that Biden Administration officials are considering extending the student loan payment pause until the end of August 2022, Abby Shafroth, interim director of the National Consumer Law Center’s Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project, issued the following statement: 

“The Biden Administration should absolutely extend the payment pause. But the pause is a temporary measure that should be in service of a longer-term fix, or borrowers may be back in the same crunch four months from now. There is widespread agreement that the current student loan system is badly broken, that the student loan safety net has failed, and that millions of borrowers have been repaying loans that should have already been discharged. 

“Frankly, four months is not enough time to fix a system that has been broken for decades. The Biden Administration has begun work on important systems reforms, but these solutions are still being ironed out and won’t be ready to implement by August. The Administration must implement these reforms before it puts borrowers back into repayment. Borrowers should not be thrown back into a broken system. 

“Moreover, President Biden promised on the campaign trail that he would provide an amount of cancellation to all borrowers and that he would address the student loan crisis. He must deliver on those promises before borrowers are expected to restart repayment.”