[ad_1]
- Biden is reportedly set to extend the student-loan payment pause through December 31, per Politico and Bloomberg.
- It comes one week before payments were scheduled to resume after August 31.
- He is also expected to announce broad student-loan forgiveness on Wednesday.
President Joe Biden is set to extend the student-loan payment pause four additional months, through the end of the year.
Sources confirmed to multiple outlets, including Politico and Bloomberg, that Biden will announce his fifth extension of the federal pause on debt payments through December 31 on Wednesday. It will likely come alongside an announcement of broad student-loan forgiveness, reportedly $10,000 in relief for federal undergraduate borrowers making under $125,000 a year.
This would also come exactly one week before payments were scheduled to resume after August 31, and amid calls from many Democratic lawmakers and advocates that were pushing Biden to give borrowers additional relief to ensure any debt cancellation could be fully implemented.
As Insider previously reported, this is the closest millions of borrowers have ever been to resuming payments without an update from Biden, and student-loan companies themselves warned that on such short notice, they might not be able to effectively account for a delay in payment resumption in a timely manner. For example, Scott Buchanan, executive director of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance — a group that represents federal loan servicers — wrote to the Education Department on Monday that any changes to accounts right now “risks operational disruptions.”
“We are now ten days out from the scheduled resumption for 35 million borrowers, and – as servicers have warned for weeks would be the case – it may not be possible to ensure that a full and complete delay in resumption could be effectuated systemically by September 1 for every borrower without incident,” Buchanan wrote.
And Republican lawmakers have slammed the idea of another extension of the pause due to the cost it would have on taxpayers. But, as Politico reported, this could be the final extension of the pause, meaning repayment might be on borrowers’ agendas after the new year.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
[ad_2]
Source link
