The Student Loan Fairness Act

Student loan debt in America has surpassed 1 trillion dollars and is only superseded by mortgage debt. In other words, the common citizen will come to find that before they try to raise a family, own a home, and start a career they will already have a significant albatross to over come. In combination with an already inflated housing market (Still overly inflated compared to wages, even after the housing collapse) the burden has become unrealistic and unmanageable.  Representative Karen Bass of California has introduced a new piece of legislation called The Student Loan Fairness Act which aims to bring relief to America’s students. From Senator Bass’ website:

This legislation would establish a new “10-10” standard for student loan repayment as the new standard repayment plan. In the “10-10” plan, an individual would be required to make ten years of payments at 10% of their discretionary income, after which, their remaining federal student loan debt would be forgiven.

The Student Loan Fairness Act would also combat crushing interest rates of public and private loans by capping federal interest rates at 3.4% and allowing existing borrowers whose educational loan debt exceeds their income to convert their private loan debt into federal Direct Loans, then enrolling their new federal loans into the 10/10 program.

The Act is a truly forward thinking piece of legislation that recognizes that saddling an enormousness percentage of the population with this amount of debt is not conducive to a thriving economy. Although this will not completely solve the student loan debt crisis, it signifies an understanding that America must act before another major bubble begins to burst.

The bill was introduced on March 21, 2013 and was referred to the Education & Workforce Committee.

The fact that this has not be publicized should be a concern to every American. If this act is to pass, the support of the nation will need to be behind it. Many Thanks to the Congressional Research Institution for Social Work and Policy for sharing this story on their Facebook Page. Checkout the full press release on Representative  Bass’ webpage @ http://bass.house.gov/bill/student-loan-fairness-act.

Take Action:

Please Sign the petition,  share this post on Facebook and Twitter, call Representative Bass, or contact the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce using the information below. Go to http://bass.house.gov/bill/student-loan-fairness-act for more information.