On January 25th, the Middle Class Task Force unveiled several initiatives designed to relieve the strain on family budgets, including a cap on student loan payments. A few days later, the President talked about this student loan proposal during his State of the Union address. The President’s words generated a lot of interest and excitement, so we wanted to tell you a little more about our plan.
Our proposal has been praised by a number of student aid experts. According to Dr. Michael Lomax, the President and CEO of UNCF, this change “will decrease the loan payments of hundreds of thousands of low-income borrowers with significant student loan debt, lightening the load of many Americans and enabling them to get the education they need, and our nation needs them to have.”
In addition to lowering monthly payments, we are proposing to keep the total cost of loan repayment manageable by forgiving all remaining debt after 20 years of payments, or 10 years of payments for those in public service work. As Mark Kantrowitz, the publisher of finaid.org said, the “acceleration of the loan forgiveness will ensure that borrowers are not still paying back their own federal student loans when their children enroll in college.”
source here.
