I don't often agree with Dick Morris, but he's entirely right here:
Special-interest legislation doesn’t get much more obnoxious than the bill now making its way though Congress to clamp down on students and former students who want to refinance their loans at lower interest rates. They are about to be severely punished for seeking not only an education but a debt-free life afterwards.While homeowners can refinance their mortgages as often as they want and relieve themselves of high-interest debt when rates cycle downward, student and former-student debtors are only permitted to refinance once for the lifetime of the loan! And now the House is considering legislation that would stop students who are in school from keeping their current interest rate of 4.75 percent and would instead force them to pay 7.9 percent, creating a lifetime burden entirely unjustified by the lending market.
Of course, since I'm dependent on student loans to finance my grad school education right now, you could call me biased, and you'd be right. But even so, it's ridiculous that you can't refinance student loans the same way you can any other loan.
Hat tip: Kevin Drum (whose trackbacks still seem to be broken).
Comments (1)
All I can see is that I am currently over $35K in debt from student loans, and I am not done yet... P.A. programs cost $25K per year, on average... 2+ years for that... Then I can join the workforce and pay off my loans.
Too bad the congressmen don't see that we *NEED* to have a lower interest rate to make it. But I guess that either they don't remember their loans (some defaulted on them over the years themselves), or they had enough family money to have mom and/or dad pay for their education.
Posted by Renee Roberts | November 20, 2005 11:20 AM