Rising Interest Rates on Student Loans

In the article,”Obama: I’ll veto GOP student loan plan” posted April 27, 2012 by Sara Libby, it is stated that President Obama will veto the bill that proposes a stop to the increase in the loan interest rates by taking from the Prevention and Public Health fund. The loan interest rates are going to be doubled this year and Obama is trying to find a way to stop this from happening. The Prevention and Public Health fund is very important health wise, especially for women. It helps in the prevention of cervical and breast cancer by providing screenings to many American women annually among other things. Sara claims that this is “a politically-motivated proposal and not the serious response that the problem facing American college students deserves.”

As a college student, I am completely for preventing the loan interest rates from going up. The fact that they are going to double, going from 3.4% to 6.8%, just astonishes me and I find it very unfair. Students who need to borrow money are most likely low/middle income so why are they trying to increase financial demands on them? So many students already have crazy amounts of debt with the current interest rates and raising them is only going to put people farther into debt. I think it may even possibly make some choose not to attend college or some to discontinue their education. 

I do not disagree with Obama’s decision to veto this bill, though. To decrease funding to the Prevention and Public Health fund is not the way to solve this problem and I don’t think it should have even been proposed. The health of Americans needs to be a top priority and we shouldn’t be looking at taking money from an organization that helps keep Americans healthy in order to decrease loan interest rates. We need to look elsewhere for solutions to this problem.

Other sources I used:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-27/house-republicans-try-to-blunt-student-loan-flap.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/congress/obama-romney-seek-to-stop-doubling-of-student-loan-interest-rate/2012/04/24/gIQAlX4VfT_story.html