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Woolsey Votes to Protect Access to Student Loans

4/17/08
 
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) today joined a bi-partisan majority of her colleagues in supporting legislation to ensure continued access to student loans.  The legislation, The Ensuring Continued Access to Federal Student Loans Act of 2008, establishes a series of new steps to protect the availability of student loans at a time of increased turmoil in the U.S. financial markets.

“No student should be denied a college education because he or she can’t afford it,” Woolsey said.  “That’s why we must continue to find ways to increase access to financial aid, ensuring that students and their families have every possible opportunity to pay for a college education.”

The legislation would help students and their families continue to access these loans by increasing federal loan limits, as well as providing more payment flexibility for families hit by the economic downturn.  Among other things the legislation would:

• Increase the annual loan limits of federal loans by $2,000 for undergraduate students, and raise the overall aggregate loan limits over the course of the student’s education;

• Provide parent borrowers of federal PLUS loans up to six months to begin repaying the loans, giving families more flexibility in hard economic times, and;

• Help struggling homeowners pay for college by making sure that short-term delinquencies in mortgage payments don’t prohibit otherwise eligible parents from being able to borrow parent PLUS loans.

“We can’t let the current credit crisis limit any student’s opportunities to receive a college education,” Woolsey said.  “This bill would give the Secretary of Education the tools to help schools in need find a lender and give students access to the money they need to attend school.

“And this serves as a preventative measure, going a long way towards averting any possible crisis in July or August when our nation’s students and their families are looking for ways to pay for the next school year.”