Harris-Biden administration extends student loan repayment freeze that impacts 8M borrowers

The Harris-Biden administration extended a moratorium Monday on federal student loan repayments pending the outcome of legal challenges against the debt cancelation plan. 

Roughly 8 million borrowers enrolled in the administration’s Saving on🙈 a Valuable Education [SAVE] plan will be excused from making monthly payments for at💮 least another six months under the extension, which was first reported by . 

President Biden’s $475 billion loan forgiveness push was temporarily blocked by the St. Louis-based 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals in July — following an earlier ruling by federal judges in Kansas and Missouri — amid a lawsuit filed by seven Republican-led states. 

The Harris-Biden ad♊ministration had already canceled $5.5 billion in stude✅nt loan debt before the preliminary injunctions.

The SAVE plan was unveiled last August after an earlier debt cancellation𝓡 effort – costing taxpayers up to $430 billion – was struck down by the Supreme Court. 

Critics of the administration’s latest student loan gambit, including congressional Republicans, have described the plan as a brazen attempt to “buy votes” in an election year.

The repayment pause comes days after Biden canceled another $4.5 billion in student loans for public workers. 

“For too long, the government failed to live up to its commitments,” Biden said in a statement last Thursday. “We vowed to fix that, and because of actions from our administration, now ov🐼er 1 million public service workers have gotten the re🎶lief they are entitled to under the law.”

An Education Department spokespe✃rson told CNBC that SAVE enrollees not making payments will be placed in an interest-free general forbearance a𝐆s part of the payment freeze extension. 

SAVE pla🍒n borrowers initially had their payments paused in July.