What Obama Has Done for Students

President Obama on October 3, 2012 said the education budget was important and he stood by his plan. Back in September 2011 when discussing the Jobs Act that didn’t get passed he proposed that community colleges work with businesses to get the skills needed for the jobs in the areas. The commentator interrupted Obama to ask Romney if he agreed which he did but the President had to interrupt and said - let me finish. He went on to say – when it comes to making colleges affordable – we kept interest rates low and took out the middle man (the banks) so more can borrow. Romney was given a chance to respond and said he has no plan to reduce education funding and then he rambled on about health care - stating we have a health system that produced the best health records in the world and other things that weren’t on point; the commentator didn’t stop Romney but did stop Obama from responding to his comments. Romney is out of touch with reality – the US health system is ranked #37 by the World Health Organization.

Since Obama didn’t get to say what he needed I will. Since 2009 students have been able to enroll in an “Income Based Repayment” (IBR) plan to cap their student loan payments. In 2010 Obama signed into law an improved IBR that lowered the cap to 10% of their discretionary income (dropped from 15%). In October 2011 the President signed an Executive Order to make the lower cap available to borrowers by the end of 2012, rather than 2014. In Obama’s January 2012 State of the Union address he called for extending the tuition tax credit and doubling the number of work study jobs in the next 5 years and he put colleges and universities on notice to stop tuitions from going up or the federal funding would go down. On June 5 President Obama issued a memorandum to again improve the IBR. On June 29 he had to sign a one-week temporary measure permitting the loan programs to continue because Congress waited until the last minute to pass a bill to maintain the low interest student loan rate. On September 5 former President Clinton outlined the President’s student loan reform saying – it lowers the cost of federal student loans and even more important, it gives the student the right to repay those loans as a clear fixed low percentage of their income for up to 20 years - It means that no one will have to drop out of college again for fear that they can’t repay their debt and it means that if someone wants to take a job with a modest income, a teacher, a police officer, if they want to be a small town doctor in a little rural area, they won’t have to turn those jobs down because they don’t pay enough to repay the debt, their debt obligation will be determined by their salary; this will change the future for young Americans.