<![CDATA[This coming week, President Obama is said to be officially offering his support of a bill proposed by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). The Senator's bill, as it is currently written, will elevate a lot of the financial burden to college graduates around the country who are currently in over $1.2 Trillion in debt due to the costs of their education. Private lenders are making Billions of dollars in profits as a result of student loans, and colleges have no incentives to lower the costs of tuition, and are actively raising the costs every year (because they can). This Student Loan Refinance Bill will save me thousands of dollars every year on my payments, and tens of thousands over the life of my loan.
Originally, the Obama administrations was hesitant to fully support this bill because of disagreements over how the government would actually be able to pay for it. You see, the bill allows former students who are currently burdened by the expensive repayment plans (myself included) to refinance all of their loans into a single loan with a much lower interest rate. In order to do this though, the government has to have the funds to purchase the loans from the current lenders, which means the government needs the funds to do it.
With a lot of pressure from various advocacy groups and a focus on working families, the president has shifted his position on the matter, and is recognizing the bill as a good idea for America's future. Like usual, the president has looked at things in terms of what works best for the future, and while not all of his policies or plans are "the best" in everyone's eyes, this one is a no-brainer. Helping students pay for student loans, not by financially supporting them, but simply by lowering the interest that they're paying overall, will present graduates with more financial opportunities for investment, job growth, and most importantly, we'll have more money to put into the economy with the purchase of goods and services.
Obama is set to call for the passage of the refinancing bill, but that doesn't mean it's going to work. One critical factor to consider when any bill comes out of the Democratic party, is the overwhelming and instantaneous denial and resistance that will come from the GOP. Regardless of how much good it will do, there's always something they'll come up with that will present a problem for America's youth and working class. This time is no different.
Student groups and other organizations love and support Warren’s bill, under which new interest rates would range from 3.86 percent for loans taken out by borrowers when they were undergraduates to 6.41 percent for parents who took out loans for their children's college tuition, as well as for borrowers who took out loans to pay for graduate school. Compare these rates to my loans, which are currently at 9.75%, 7.6% and the federal Department of Education loans that are locked at 6.25%. Reducing the interest rate in a refinance move would save me over $230/month in payments, and reduce my financial burden for college by almost $55,000 over the life of my loan (given the amount I owe).
Keep in mind, myself and other students aren't asking for the government to bail us out (even though, in hind site to the others they've bailed out in the past, this is a much more worthy cause). Instead, we're merely excited about not having to pay, in many cases, over $100,000 more than we borrowed for our education. We're still going to pay interest... just not double our principal. That's good for everyone... well, except the private banks and lenders who's income is purely based on interest, screwing students like me over every month while keeping us oppressed into a struggling middle-class. Personally, I spent nearly 40% of my monthly income on student loans. I could, obviously, reduce this to 10% of my income, but if I was to do this, the interest rate I'm at would cause my debt to rise every month even when I'm making payments. I would essentially be stuck in endless debt. - and that's what the financial industry wants.
[charliead]The financial industry hates this proposal. The bill would allow borrowers to refinance loans owned by the private sector into new loans made by the Education Department. Paying off loans early deprives lenders of future interest income, causing paper losses. Effectively, if I'm allowed to refinance my private loan balances, which total over $35,000 as of this article, the private institutions that I currently owe at 9.75% APR would be missing out on tens of thousands of dollars in interest payments over the next 20 years. Clearly, they're not in favor of that, and their Republican friends are going to try and make their real friends happy, rather than the American people.
Republicans are dead set against enacting the proposal into law. On top of the fact that income that was originally going to private companies is now being redirected into federal money (because the loans are federal loans, and therefore the interest is paid to the government instead of the private sector), the Democrats proposed to offset the loss of future federal revenue by increasing taxes on the extremely wealthy -- an idea that is always frowned upon in conservative circles. What did we expect? Common sense over greed?
“This bill doesn’t make college more affordable, reduce the amount of money students will have to borrow, or do anything about the lack of jobs grads face in the Obama economy,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement.
This is obviously wrong, as usual. By reducing my interest rates by more than half of what they are today, I’ll pay significantly less for my education on a per month basis, which carries over to an even bigger effect in the long-term, because of how compound interest works. It absolutely makes college more affordable, because it reduces the cost of education. Simple as that. On top of that, while it doesn’t ‘reduce the amount students will have to borrow’, it does reduce the amount they’ll have to pay in the end, with reduced interest rates.
How would they like it if I claimed that raising taxes wouldn’t effect how much money you earn in your business, but it would effect how much you have to pay every year. – It’s exactly the same thing, and it’s the exact reason you fight tax increases every year. The difference here is simple: you like keeping us in debt. The more debt we’re in, the more money banks will make, and the more money they’ll continue to funnel into your campaigns when you vote the way they want you to, so the cycle will continue.
Student Loan Refinance Bill Would Save Me Tens of Thousands of Dollars
