Robert Torricelli: “last year, the Senate made significant strides in easing the burdens of American families facing the mounting costs of a…”

“last year, the Senate made significant strides in easing the burdens of American families facing the mounting costs of a college education. In an initiative that I have sponsored, and in which I take enormous pride--the tax reduction legislation of last year--there is a provision allowing partial tuition, for the first time in American history, to become tax deductible. Another measure that I successfully authored raised a cap on interest on student loans so that they could become deductible. In many ways, for middle-income families--indeed, for all American families--this was enormously helpful in easing the burden of an expensive college education. You can imagine how distressed I was to discover in recent days that the administration has a new initiative that would now increase the burden of financing a college education--just as we were making all of this progress. The proposal, of course, is to prohibit the consolidation of student loans at low, fixed interest rates. This will compound the problems of millions of American families who rely upon student loans to finance a college education.”