Currently, Americans owe more on their student loans than on all credit card debt combined. Now, in a controversial plan, President Barack Obama is proposing an initiative to ease payment on 1.6 million student loans.
Former students would begin to lower their debts starting in 2012, instead of 2014 when the currently planned cap is scheduled to start.
Obama made his comments at a campaign stop in Denver, Colo., as the city received its first major snowfall of the year Wednesday. The president promised to reduce the amount a student would pay to only 10 percent of their current discretionary income.
The announcment may have been in responce to current public outcry over whether student loans should be repaid at all.
It will be an Obama executive order that eventually eases the student loan debt burden in 2012, which is two years before the law currently on the books is slated to take effect.
More than 36 million Americans have federal student loans at present but only 450,000 graduates are taking advantage of the existing income-based plan.
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Said Obama, "I want Americans to have the most highly skilled workers doing the most advanced work. I want us to win the future."
Cash-poor students struggling in a poor economy will have one additional incentive to continue learning: When passed, the new administration plan will forgive student debt in twenty years, and could reduce payments by $200 a month for some, rather than in the 25 years which is now law.
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