WGBH News: Warren Renews Push To Refinance Student Loan Debt
By Kirk Carapezza
May 11, 2014
Senator Elizabeth Warren is renewing her effort to help former college students pay back their student loan debt.
Warren wants to bring high student loan interest rates down to the rates that are offered to new borrowers this year.
Earlier this week, WGBH's On Campus caught up with the senator shortly after she left the floor of the Senate where she filed a bill to do just that.
On Campus: If successful, what will this bill mean for those who have outstanding student loan debt?
Warren: Their interest rate payments will be cut for many of them by hundreds of dollars a year and for many more by thousands of dollars a year.
Students will still pay all of the principle, so they're paying all of the cost of going to college. They will pay all of the administrative costs of handling student loans, the bad debt losses the cost of the funds and actually a little bit above that. But what students won't be paying is the money that is producing tens of billions of dollars in excess revenue for the government.
Anyone who has a student loan, whether it's a federal student loan or a private student loan, would be eligible to refinance. With interest rates at historic loans, homeowners have refinanced their mortgages. Small business owners have refinanced their outstanding business loans. Heck, even municipalities have refinanced their debt. But former students have not been able to do that. And so we've got 40 million people out there dealing with student loan debt.
Read the full article online here.
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