Millions of federal student-loan borrowers just got an additional 4 months of relief through Biden's fourth payment pause extension

• Biden just extended the federal pause on student-loan payments through August 31.
• This followed weeks of pressure from advocates urging Biden to extend the May 1 payment restart date.

President Joe Biden just extended the pandemic pause on student-loan payments a fourth time, through August 31.

On Wednesday, Biden announced that federal student-loan borrowers will be getting an additional four months without being required to make monthly debt payments, just weeks before the previous student-loan payment pause was set to expire on May 1. Over the past weeks, lawmakers and advocates have been urging Biden to extend needed relief for borrowers, and it looks like his administration heeded those calls.

Biden said in a statement that "as I recognized in recently extending the COVID-19 national emergency, we are still recovering from the pandemic and the unprecedented disruption it caused. If loan payments were to resume on schedule in May, analysis of recent data from the Federal Reserve suggest that millions of student loan borrowers would face significant economic hardship, and delinquencies and defaults could threaten American's financial stability."

The Education Department wrote in a statement that during the extension, it will "continue to assess the financial impacts of the pandemic on student loan borrowers and to prepare to transition borrowers smoothly back into repayment." This includes allowing borrowers with paused loans to receive a "fresh start" by returning them to good standing when they enter repayment, and the department will continue to forgive loans for borrowers defrauded by for-profit schools, along with public servants.

"The Department of Education is committed to ensuring that student loan borrowers have a smooth transition back to repayment," Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement. "This additional extension will allow borrowers to gain more financial security as the economy continues to improve and as the nation continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The student-loan payment pause has been in place since March 2020, implemented first by former President Donald Trump to give borrowers a financial reprieve during the pandemic. And while borrowers have expressed the impact the pause has had on their livelihoods, allowing them to keep themselves and their families financially afloat, many of them were still concerned with being thrown back into repayment. That's why lawmakers and advocates were consistently urging the president to either extend the pause yet again, or cancel student debt.

Some lawmakers, like Chair of the Senate education committee Patty Murray, suggested Biden use the extra time from the payment pause to "permanently fix" flaws in the student-loan system, like broken loan forgiveness programs.

"This is not too much to ask—so until we fix our student loan system, the student loan payment pause must continue to provide borrowers much-needed relief," she said in March.

Still, Wednesday's extension falls short of what Murray and nearly 100 other Democratic lawmakers were pushing for, which was an extension of the pause at least through 2023 and debt cancellation.

"I think some folks read these extensions as savvy politics, but I don't think those folks understand the panic and disorder it causes people to get so close to these deadlines just to extend the uncertainty," New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. "It doesn't have the affect people think it does. We should cancel them."

Republican lawmakers were also not too pleased with another pause on payments, but for different reasons. Top GOP lawmaker on the House education committee Virginia Foxx said in a Tuesday statement that another payment freeze on student loans is "outrageous," and she worries it is "setting the stage for blanket loan forgiveness," which she says will cost taxpayers and the economy.

While Biden has still not commented on the prospect of broad student-loan forgiveness, this fourth extension will likely amplify advocates' argument that if he can afford to keep pausing payments, he can afford to cancel student debt altogether.

How will this additional payment pause extension impact you? Share your student debt story with Ayelet Sheffey at asheffey@insider.com.