Today, the president met with a number of student activists about the issue that has many Americans worried: student debt.
Speaking at the White House, President Obama asked students to raise their voices (again) and urge Congress to pass legislation before July 1st to keep student loan interest rates from doubling.
“We cannot price the middle class … out of a college education,” said the president. “We can’t keep saddling young people with more and more debt just as they’re starting out in life.”
The president spoke out against H.R. 1911 (the Smarter Solutions for Students Act) , calling the Republican-backed legislation “not smart”. The bill, which has a lifetime cap on student loan interest rates at 8.5%, would make the situation worse for students than if Congress allows the current rate to double. Perhaps this is a sign that the president sees the weakness in his own plan, which would tie the student loan interest rate to the market rate with no cap at all.
(Here's our blog post about it in case you’re interested in reading more about the Obama plan for student loan interest rates).
For those of you who missed it, here are some choice tweets from Clarise McCants and Brandon Anderson. They were both in attendance at the Rose Garden this morning and live-tweeted on behalf of the I AM NOT A LOAN campaign. Thanks to those who joined in on the conversation --
Cross-Posted at I AM NOT A LOAN.