U.S. Senate Republicans blocked Democrats’ proposal to cover the cost of a one-year freeze in government student loan interest rates by requiring some professional services firms to pay withholding taxes on their income.
The Senate, in a 52-45 vote with 60 required, didn’t advance the plan to avert a July 1 increase in college-loan interest rates to 6.8 percent from 3.4 percent….
Republicans said they opposed the measure because they wanted a chance to offer another way to cover the $6 billion cost of the interest rate freeze.
There approximately 18,000 parking lot attendants, 317,000 waiters and waitresses, and 365,000 cashiers in America with college degrees. Many of these over-qualified and underemployed hard working Americans are struggling to repay their student loans. To understand why student loan interest relief is a pressing issue, consider these statistics:
!. The cost of college tuition in the United States has gone up by over 900 percent since 1978.
2. Americans have accumulated well over $900 billion in student loan debt (more than the total amount of credit card debt in the United States!).
3. Approximately 14 percent of all students that graduate with student loan debt end up defaulting within 3 years of making their first student loan payment.
