Student Loan Payments: Will Joe Biden Extend the Pause? It appears the Biden administration is considering extending the pause again, but that does not mean for certain that it will also forgive those student loans. On his fist day in office, President Joe Biden signed an executive order extending a freeze on federal student loan repayments for eight months. The extension followed the initial freeze that was included in the Trump administration’s CARES Act passed in March 2020, which froze payments for a period of six months. Prior to Biden’s executive order, the freeze was extended again by Trump through December 2020. Biden’s extension delayed the start of repayments until at least October 2021.