by Mike Hall, Jan 17, 2007

College tuition and student fees are 41 percent higher today than in 2001, and the average college grad leaves school with a diploma and a $17,500 debt. Today, the House voted, 356-71, to ease the burden of a college education when it passed a bill that will cut interest rates in half on federal student loans.

Says Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chief sponsor of H.R. 5, the College Student Relief Act:

This is really the first time that an entire generation of Americans has had to go deeply into debt in order to get a college degree. Public service professions like teaching are suffering, because graduates often cannot manage their college debt on public service salaries. And many would-be students, as many as 200,000 per year, are choosing to delay or forgo attending college because they can’t afford it.

This will be an important first step towards making college more affordable and accessible for millions of low- and middle-income students.

Last night, the Bush administration declared its opposition to the college loan interest rate cut that is estimated to help some 5.5 million students who get need-based federal loans. 

The bill cuts the current 6.8 percent interest rate—that last year the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress allowed to nearly double—to 3.4 percent in five steps.

Says Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), the chief sponsor of the Senate companion bill:

Again and again in recent years, the response of Congress and the administration to this crisis has been to respond with half-measures—or worse, with measures that actually made the crisis even worse.

That was made painfully clear by last year’s “Raid on Student Aid,” in which the Congress stripped $12 billion from student loan programs in order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.

Once the interest rate cut is fully phased in, Miller says, it will save the typical borrower some $4,400 over the life of the loan.

In a joint letter to the House from AFT and the National Education Association (NEA), the educators’ unions say the bill:

Represents a critical fist step in reducing the college debt that burdens millions of students….Once fully phased in, the interest rate cut is estimated to help ease the financial burden of more than 5.5 million undergraduate students.

Today’s action marks the fifth of six major legislative priorities the new Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) promised to pass in the first 100 working hours of the new 110th Congress. Last week, the House passed a bill to raise the federal minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25 and legislation that requires Medicare to negotiate with the pharmaceutical industry for lower prescription drug prices. The House also passed a bill to implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission and toughened House ethics and lobbying rules.

Tomorrow, the House is expected to roll back tax breaks to petro-giants, such as Exxon, that House Republicans included in last year’s energy bill. Those Bush-backed tax breaks came on the heels of record oil company profit reports and record gasoline costs for consumers.

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