Heidi Alexander: “I enjoyed listening to the Senator from Rhode Island, as I always do. His passion for education is always on his sleeve…”

“I enjoyed listening to the Senator from Rhode Island, as I always do. His passion for education is always on his sleeve and always front and center and I admire him for that. There are a couple of things I wish to make clear. If you are a student and you already have a student loan, what we are talking about has nothing to do with your loan. In other words, your rate on that loan is not going up. What we are talking about only affects new loans. So before you think about not going to college next year because of all this talk about student loan rates going up, that is not a problem. We are only talking about new loans. Second, for 60 percent of the students who get new loans, we are not talking about you either. So you don't have to worry about student loan rates going up. Third, for those of you about whom we are talking, the 40 percent who have these subsidized undergraduate student loans, what we are talking about saving you is $7 a month in interest payments over the next 10 years. Now $7 a month can add up, which is why Governor Romney as well as President Obama, Republicans as well as Democrats, wants to keep the interest rate at the rate it is now for new loans, 3.4 percent, for another year. But it is $7 a month in savings. It is important to know that. It is also important to know that there is an easy way to get this done.…”