Students Get Relief

By Sam Graham-Felsen - Sep 7th, 2007 at 7:46 pm EDT

Very good news for students (and parents) yesterday:

Congress gave final approval to a broad overhaul of federal student loan programs today, sharply cutting subsidies to lenders and increasing grants to needy students...

The legislation, hammered out in a House-Senate conference committee this week, alters many of the ground rules for financing higher education, offering forgiveness on student loans to graduates who work for 10 years or more in public service professions like teaching, firefighting and the police, and limiting monthly payments on their loans to 15 percent of their discretionary income. It also raises the maximum Pell grant, the basic federal grant for middle- and low-income students, to $5,400 from its current level of $4,310 over the next four years. To pay for the changes it slashed federal subsidies to lenders by roughly $20 billion.

It's good to see that this generation, which has been drowning in debt, is finally getting some relief and that Congress is prioritizing young people over the private student loan lobby.

Barack has been a champion of college affordability from his first day in the Senate. In fact, the very first bill he introduced was aimed at increasing Pell Grants to help students pay for school.

This is yet another reason why Barack is resonating with so many young people -- instead of ignoring them (as so many politicians have done in the past), he's speaking to the issues that directly affect them.

Check out Students.BarackObama.com for a student perspective on today's news and to learn how you can get involved in the campaign on your campus. And if you're a Facebook user, add our Facebook application to get the word out to your friends.