A Majority of Voters Support Continuing Student Loan Suspensions During the Pandemic
By David Guirgis and Kirby Phares
In less than two months, more than 42 million borrowers will begin repaying federal student loans after the federal government hit pause on student loan payments for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic. Yet despite the Biden Administration’s own admission that a “large wave [of coronavirus] is coming” from the rising Omicron variant, the Biden administration says it has no intention of extending the pandemic payment moratorium beyond its current end date of January 31, 2022.
In a new Data for Progress poll, we find that the Biden administration’s refusal to extend the student loan moratorium is out of step with the views of a majority of national likely voters. Seventy percent of voters across the political spectrum, including a majority of Republicans, support pausing student loan repayments during the pandemic.
In addition, a majority of voters agree that, because of the ongoing pandemic and the threat of the new Omicron variant, the Biden administration should extend the moratorium past the end of January 2022. The only demographic polled who disagreed with the statement was self-identified Republicans; Democrats, Independents, and both college-educated voters and voters without college degrees agree with extending the moratorium.
So far, the Biden administration is pushing ahead with their plans to end the moratorium. But in doing so, Biden risks alienating a majority of voters — and exacerbating the student loan debt crisis.
David Guirgis is a writing fellow at Data for Progress.
Kirby Phares (@kirbyphares) is a polling analyst at Data for Progress.