Heidi Alexander: “I come to the floor to ask my Democratic colleagues to take another look at the student loan issue that will be before…”

“I come to the floor to ask my Democratic colleagues to take another look at the student loan issue that will be before us tomorrow. We are playing with real lives here. These are about 11 million students who are going to college in the fall. They will be taking out 18 million loans for this year. Taxpayers will be loaning them over $100 billion. The only proposal we are going to be voting on tomorrow appears to be one that will leave over 7 million middle-income college students swinging in the wind, paying about twice as much in interest rates as they should be paying. At the same time, we have a proposal that is based upon a recommendation by President Obama that is like legislation already passed by the Republican House of Representatives that is supported by an Independent and two Democratic Senators and three Republican Senators that would lower student loan interest rates on every single one of the 18 million new loans that would be taken out next year and cut nearly in half the interest rates on loans for undergraduate students, which make up two-thirds of the loans.…”