A majority of people want the student-loan payment pause extended through the end of 2022, poll finds

• President Joe Biden recently extended the pause on student-loan payments through May 1.
• A Data for Progress poll of 1,214 people found 59% of respondents support an additional extension through the end of 2022.

The majority of people wouldn't be mad if President Joe Biden decided to extend the pause on student-loan payments a fourth time, according to a new poll.

Biden recently gave 43 million federal student-loan borrowers an additional 90 days of relief when he extended the pause on payments through May 1. But a new Data for Progress poll obtained by Insider found the majority of likely voters would support an additional extension. Specifically, of the 1,214 likely voters surveyed from January 21 to 24, 59% of them said they would support extending the pause through the end of 2022.

All in, 81% of Democrats polled were supportive, compared to 36% of Republicans.

Additionally, 64% of poll participants were supportive of Biden's current pause through May 1, while 29% opposed it.

Since March 2020, federal student-loan borrowers have not been required to make payments on their debt as part of pandemic relief measures. And while Biden announced in August that his second extension of the pause through February 1 would be "final," right before Christmas he further extended the pause, citing the uncertainty with the Omicron variant as the primary reason for the decision.

While that additional relief was welcome news to borrowers and lawmakers who had been urging the president to push back the resumption of payments, some argued that instead of using this extra time to prepare to pay off their debt in three months, Biden should instead use that time to fix broken loan forgiveness programs and cancel student debt altogether.

"We continue to call on President Biden to take executive action to cancel $50,000 in student debt, which will help close the racial wealth gap for borrowers and accelerate our economic recovery," Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley wrote in a statement.

Some Republican lawmakers, though, are not pleased with the continued extension of the pause on student-loan payments. Rep. Virginia Foxx — the top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee — said in a statement last week that the latest extension "is a troubling trend toward blanket student loan forgiveness, which would be a massive mistake, with major consequences for borrowers and taxpayers."

As Insider previously reported, the economic consequences of broad student-loan relief are controversial, but Marshall Steinbaum, senior fellow at the Jain Family Institute and economics professor at the University of Utah, told Insider the economy has been "more than fine" during the pause on payments, and there's no reason why that wouldn't continue with an additional extension — or debt cancellation.

"If we cancel student debt, what that really means is the federal government is choosing not to collect payments from debtors on the debt that's already issued," Steinbaum said. "Can the federal government afford that reduction in revenue of, say, $100 billion a year or some number like that every year, indefinitely? I think there's no doubt the answer to that question is yes."

And as President of the NAACP Derrick Johnson said in a December statement: "If you can afford to pause student loan payments over and over again, you can afford to cancel it."