Washington Sen. Murray presses Biden to extend pause on student loan payments
Mar 16, 2022, 10:34 AM
(Getty Images)
(Getty Images)
Washington Sen. Patty Murray is pressing President Joe Biden to extend an ongoing pause on student loan payments through the end of this year.
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Student loan payments were first postponed for 60 days by then-President Donald Trump in March of 2020, before extending that moratorium two more times before leaving office. Since then, Biden has extended that postponement twice himself, and has hinted at doing so again before the current pause expires in May.
On Wednesday, Sen. Murray described the nation’s current system of student repayment as “broken,” citing how borrowers “are struggling with rising costs,” particularly those in communities of color.
“I have heard horror stories from borrowers about hours-long phone calls with their student loan servicers trying to get questions answered, or reading through pages of fine print to figure out the best repayment program or how to consolidate loans,” she said in a news release. “And I’ve heard stories of folks spending weeks applying for a student loan discharge after paying their loans for decades—all to find out that they can’t get the relief they were promised because of impossibly complicated paperwork or an obscure technicality.”
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Given that, she’s now pushing for Biden to extend the repayment pause “until at least 2023,” and to use that extra time to “permanently fix our student loan system.” That included suggestions from Murray to allow borrowers in default to enter back into good standing, expand income-driven repayment programs, and forgive the existing debt for “those struggling the most, including borrowers of color, borrowers with low incomes, and borrowers who have been trapped in repayment for over 20 years.”
Speaking to student loan borrowers in Washington state, Murray further expressed her belief that they “deserve real relief and a fair, workable system.”
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