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Obama: Keeping student loans affordable is 'all about the economy'

President Barack Obama tried two-part strategy today to push Congress keep interest rates student loans from doubling on July 1:

First, he filled the East Room college students and a speech demanding action on legislation prevent this increase. Second, the Treasury Department and the Education Department issued a report quantified the value a college education: The median weekly earnings a college graduate was $1,053 in 2011, compared $638 for a high school graduate.

That earnings gap is the highest it’s been 1915.

“Some form of higher education, something beyond high school never been more important,” Obama said. “It's the surest path finding a good job, earning a good salary, making it the middle class.”

The problem, Obama said, is that Americans owe more on student loans they do on credit cards. If interest rates on federal student loans double 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent, “over 7 million students will hit with the equivalent of a $1,000 tax hike,” Obama said.

“We can’t price them of the college education market,” the president said. “We can't stand when millions of young people are already saddled debt just as you're starting off.”

Enabling students go to college is “all about the economy,” Obama said.

“This is about whether or we are going to have the best-trained, best-educated work force in world. That improves our economy. And higher education cannot be a luxury reserved for a privileged few.”

Republicans agree that Congress should prevent an increase student loan interest rates -- they just don’t agree Democrats on how to come with the $6 billion needed to this. Democrats want to increase payroll taxes shareholder/employees at some professional services firms. That’s a tax hike small businesses, Republicans claim. They’d rather get the money by taking it a preventive health care fund created under Obamacare.

That “would create new problem,” Obama said.

So Obama urged the students in the East Room, and Americans everywhere, to “keep the pressure ” Congress to end this stalemate.


Adapted and abridged from: The Business Journals, June 21, 2012.