House Republicans Call for Long-Term Fix on Student Loan Interest Rates
February 12, 2013
On Monday, Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and the Workforce sent a letter to President Obama asking him to outline a “fiscally responsible, long-term solution” for the Stafford Loan interest rate problem.
Last year, Congress passed a last-minute one-year freeze that kept the interest rate on new federally subsidized loans to undergraduate students from doubling from 3.4 to 6.8 percent. Lawmakers only approved the extension, which expires on July 1, 2013, after months of disagreement over plans to pay for the nearly $6 billion offset.
“As the June 30 deadline nears, it is time for us to work together on a sustainable solution to ensure students have the certainty they need to plan for the cost of attending college,” the letter states. Its signatories said that they “support resolving the interest-rate cliff by moving toward a market-based interest rate for Stafford loans in a fiscally responsible manner.” The letter asks the president to include an outline of the proposal in his upcoming budget request for the 2014 fiscal year, which it said should provide a long-term fix and the “requisite offsets to ensure taxpayers will not be forced to bear the burden of fixing this problem.”
Related Links:
Press Release from the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and the Workforce
https://edworkforce.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=319508
Michelle Cormier Mott
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