It is not the job of the Department of Education to maximize profits for the government at the cost of squeezing students who are struggling to get an education.
Right now, with millions of Americans still out of work, and struggling to recover from the worst economic downturn since the great depression, with 40 million Americans dealing with student loans, with millions of people working full-time at minimum wage and still living in poverty, with the big banks getting bigger and the workers getting poorer, and seniors struggling to make ends meet, Republicans in Washington have decided the most important thing for them to focus on is how to deny women access to birth control.
College students today are drowning in debt, and it is hurting them and hurting our economy. We must find a way to help families pay for college without condemning them to a lifetime of indebtedness.
It's critical to level the playing field, to make prices and risks clear up front, so when someone signs on for a student loan or a mortgage or a credit card, they know the tricks and traps hidden in the fine print. That's why the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been working on a new financial aid shopping sheet. A shorter, two-page credit card agreement, a simpler mortgage disclosure form. All those are aimed toward helping people understand the basic bargain.
Student loan debt is crushing young people. And so they're not doing the things we would expect them to do. They're not moving out of their parents' homes in as big a numbers, they're not saving up money for down payments, they're not buying homes or cars or starting small businesses or doing any of the things that help move this economy forward.
We need to align the incentives so that colleges have an incentive to keep down their costs... to graduate students on time with degrees in areas where they're going to be able to get jobs and going to be able to pay back those loans.
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