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July 27, 2007
Making It Easier To Be Educated
 
By Congressman Gene Green
 
Washington, DC - Many people want to attend college as it traditionally provides a path to well-paying jobs and a more secure future and economy for Americans of all ages. Unfortunately, tuition at public colleges has grown by 35 percent in just the last five years, making college too expensive for many bright Texans. In our district, financial barriers often inhibit the ability of high school graduates to go to college.
 
This is why I supported the College Cost Reduction Act (H.R. 2669), which passed this month in both the House and the Senate, and the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 (H.R. 2), which became law this past week. These two bills will help those who wish to go to college but may not be able to afford to do so.
 
The College Cost Reduction Act will strengthen the middle class by making college more affordable at no additional costs to taxpayers. The bill will invest $18 billion in financial aid, the largest increase since the GI Bill President Roosevelt signed into law in 1944. This bill will be especially beneficial to the 29th Congressional District, where a large number of students qualify for Pell Grants and are forced to take out large loans in order to finish school.
 
This bill attacks the problem of college affordability in several ways. First, the interest rate on need-based federal student loans would be cut in half, from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent over the next five years. Each year in Texas, 205,508 students take out need-based student loans. These students carry an average of $14,233 in debt, so the reduced interest rate would save each borrower about $4,500 over the life of the loan.
 
Second, the maximum value of the Pell Grant scholarship would rise by $500 by 2011. Pell Grants are awarded to students based on their ability to pay tuition and other education-related costs. While these scholarships have traditionally increased along with tuition, their purchasing power has actually declined since the 2003-2004 school year when they were frozen at $4,050. When combined with other Pell scholarship increases passed or proposed by Congress this year, the maximum Pell Grant would reach $4,900 in 2008 and $5,200 in 2011, up from $4,050 in 2006, thus restoring the Pell’s purchasing power and benefiting nearly half a million students in Texas alone.
 
Third, the bill would provide loan forgiveness up to $5,000 for first responders, law enforcement officers, firefighters, nurses, public defenders, prosecutors, early childhood educators, librarians and others who agree to serve in public service for a set amount of years.
 
Fourth, it would provide tuition assistance for high-achieving undergraduate students who go on to teach in high-need area public schools for a certain amount of time. Federal loan limits would also be raised so students wouldn’t have to rely on more expensive private loans. Borrowers would never have to devote more than 15 percent of their discretionary incomes to make loan payments, and those in economic hardship could have their loans forgiven after 20 years.
 
All of this will be done at no additional cost to the taxpayers by cutting excess subsidies paid by the federal government to lenders in the student loan industry. Four of the six offsets were already approved by the House this year, when it overwhelmingly voted to pass the College Student Relief Act of 2007 this past January. During the past few years, student lenders have been able to increase their efficiencies through market-driven mechanisms, but the government’s subsidization has continued unchecked.
 
Finally, the recent minimum wage increase was the first in nearly ten years, despite the fact that the value of the minimum wage in 2006 dollars had slid drastically from over nine dollars per hour in 1968 to about five dollars in 2007. By passing the Fair Minimum Wage Act we have begun to remedy that disparity. Now, when a student has to work and go to school, he or she will at least be earning a better wage.
 
By passing these two important pieces of legislation, we are investing in the future of our economy, because we will have more college graduates with a lower debt burden.   This will enable graduates to do things like buy homes, invest, and fuel our economy.
 
To find out more about how you can benefit from this, please join me at our district’s biannual Paying for College Workshop at Sam Houston High School in Houston on September 12 at 7:00 p.m. Representatives from Sallie Mae, a major lender to college students, will be there to provide parents and students with information about funding a college education. We sponsor these workshops twice a year and have held them at most of our high schools, including South Houston, Pasadena and Milby. We hope to see you there.
 
Rep. Green is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Community College and Pell Grant Caucuses.

 

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