Political Quotes

“Mr. President, as you well know, since you worked awfully hard and very effectively with respect to the issue of student loans, we are about to rush into a complete restructuring of the way we price student loans. I believe this is not the appropriate approach. I think there are some fundamental issues with the student lending program that require a comprehensive approach. I have tried, along with many of my colleagues, to at least extend the 3.4 percent for a year so we can do this systematically and thoughtfully, do it in terms of not just interest rate structures but in terms of incentives to keep college costs down and also to deal with the increasingly difficult issue of the existing loan burdens that students have so they can refinance--not just in the future but families of students struggling today with a huge amount of student debt. Student debt has exceeded $1 trillion. It has surpassed credit card debt as the second largest household debt that we hold in the United States. In this context, I think we have to go forward and look at this comprehensively. The bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act is a product of great effort and very sincere effort to try to deal with this problem. But I do not think it will lead to a long-term stable solution that will benefit students. What I think it will do is shift the costs of these programs increasingly to students. This is not the way it used to be.…”