Bill Clinton: “Well, we're working out the details now. But let me tell you how I want it to work, okay? And it will be pretty close to…”

“Well, we're working out the details now. But let me tell you how I want it to work, okay? And it will be pretty close to this, I think. First of all, let me tell you how it works today. You know, there is a student loan program today, and the more you borrow, the more you have to pay back in short order. And you get the money through your bank, and there's a Government guarantee. Today, that program costs the taxpayers about $4 billion a year: $3 billion in busted loans where people don't pay back the money they owe and $1 billion in transaction fees to the bank. What I hope to be able to do is to have people borrow the money directly from the Government and pay it back at tax time so they can't beat the bill. That will save a huge amount of money. And I want to take the savings and do two things: One is to say to young people, you must pay the money back, but you can pay the money back as a percentage of your income. So that if you make less money, you pay less, and we'll string it out over longer periods of time. So we'll never discourage anybody from being a teacher or working in some other kind of public work just because the salary is low. The second thing we want to do is give people the option either to earn credits against this loan before they go to college, or to do community service after they get out, as teachers or police officers or in other public service. And the way I'm trying to set it up, if you borrowed the maximum amount of money we'd make available and then you worked for 2 years at roughly half pay as a teacher or police officer, that would wipe off your obligation. And you'd pay your loan back by giving something back to your country. And so that's how it's supposed to work. Now, that's more Government spending all right, but see, that's a direct investment in you. That's not expanding some Government program. That's putting the money direct into you. That's cutting the cost of a program and increasing investment in your future. Youth Apprenticeship Program”