Education needs bipartisan effort

By REP. JOE COURTNEY | 5/7/12 9:24 PM EDT

In the midst of the most desperate threat to our nation, President Abraham Lincoln looked beyond the dire present of the Civil War and signed a groundbreaking national commitment to higher education. On July 2, 1862, the Morrill Act created the land-grant system for state educational institutions to foster engineering and agricultural science.

From coast to coast — from the University of Florida to the University of Alaska — every state has benefited from Lincoln’s foresight and a supportive, bipartisan group of legislators. For generations, that was how Washington looked on higher education.

Federal investment in higher education was always supported by bipartisan agreements. In fact, the two workhorses of higher education funding — the Pell Grant program and Stafford student loan program, which helps middle-class families pay for college — are named after a Democrat and Republican, respectively. In the 150 years since Lincoln signed the Morrill Act, our leaders understood that investing in young people is the real secret to U.S. success. More than our military might, financial wealth or natural resources, American innovation and creativity have sparked this country’s fire.

The day before the Morrill Act turns 150, however, the bipartisan legacy Lincoln established could retreat. Without congressional action, on July 1, the interest rate on subsidized Stafford student loans is due to double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. Against the backdrop of a tough economy and spiraling college costs, the rate was lowered to 3.4 percent in 2007, when President George W. Bush signed into law the College Cost Reduction and Access Act, which passed the House with the support of more than 200 Democrats and 77 Republicans.

President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address called on Congress to protect those lower rates. With college tuition skyrocketing and the purchasing power of federal financial aid receding, students already have serious difficulties financing higher education.

Young Americans are taking on dangerously high levels of student debt. Student loan debt now exceeds credit card debt and auto loan debt, according to the Federal Reserve, and surpassed $1 trillion. Americans took out more than $100 billion in student loans last year, for the first time in our history.

This trajectory of borrowing is unsustainable. And it will only get worse if subsidized Stafford student loan rates double on July 1. If Congress does nothing, according to the nonpartisan U.S. Public Interest Research Groups, borrowers taking out the maximum $23,000 in subsidized student loans will see their debt burden increase by an estimated $5,000 over a 10-year repayment period and $11,000 over a 20-year repayment period.

Despite the long history of bipartisan cooperation on higher education, during the three months since the president called for action, Republican leaders repeatedly dismissed this issue. They did not schedule one hearing or markup — or engage in any dialogue with the minority to fix this problem.

My bill to prevent rates from doubling racked up 150 co-sponsors. But it did not win support from a single Republican until April 25.

The strong support for addressing the student loan problem has finally shaken loose the House Republican leadership. Speaker John Boehner’s abrupt turnaround on April 26 to support student loans follows months of GOP intransigence.

Of course, the GOP “plan” to pay for it by defunding women and children’s health services is hardly a responsible solution. But at least they have conceded the need to act.

With just weeks to act before student loan rates will double, I urge the party of Lincoln to follow the example of its founder — and make a bipartisan investment in higher education a priority again.

Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) served on the former House Education and Labor Committee, now the Education and the Workforce Committee, until January 2011. He introduced the Student Loan Affordability Act, which would cap subsidized Stafford loan rates, on Jan. 25.

Admiral: EB, base crucial to Navy
Sub delivered during yard tour
By JAMES MOSHER
The Bulletin
Posted May 02, 2012 @ 11:34 PM

Groton, Conn. —
One of the Navy’s top officers formally took receipt of an Electric Boat Corp.-built submarine Wednesday during a visit in which the value of the manufacturer and the nearby submarine station were extolled.

“We continue to dominate the undersea domain and will in the future,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert said during a dockside press conference at EB’s Groton shipyard. He expressed support for plans for EB to continue building two submarines per year, but budget constraints are a reality, he said.

“We’re comfortable now, but we’ll need to be vigilant,” Greenert said, flanked by U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, and EB President Kevin Poitras. Wednesday was Poitras’ first day as president. His predecessor, John Casey, who was promoted to the General Dynamics Corp. vice presidency of the division that oversees EB, was in the audience.

“His remarks have energized our entire workforce,” Poitras said of Greenert after a tour of the shipyard. “We’re very proud to have him here.”

Courtney expressed relief that congressional committees have decided not to take up base closures any further during this election year. The Groton base has been designated for closure previously, most recently in 2005.

“I feel we have a very powerful case that it (the base) should be of enduring value,” Courtney said.
Greenert, who took over his post as operations chief in September, agreed.

“It’s our training center,” he said. “That’s important, and something that’s not talked about very much.”

In praising EB, Greenert noted the USS Mississippi was delivered one year ahead of schedule. It cost $2.6 billion to build the ship, which was christened in December. He formally took acceptance of the vessel Wednesday.

“The shipbuilding team here in and in Newport News (Va.) continue to deliver submarines that are on time and under budget,” he said. “It’s probably the best program that we have.”

Wednesday’s event was not open to the public, mostly for security reasons.

The synergy between EB and the Navy remains strong, according to Harold Haugeto, EB’s ship manager of the Mississippi, and Navy team leader John McGrath, who held a press conference after Greenert’s remarks.

“It’s a team effort; the shipyard builds them, and we test them,” McGrath said. “It (the Mississippi) is a tremendous achievement. We’re excited to be continuing with this program.”

Personal visits to EB and the base by U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who took a tour in November, and Greenert are positive symbols, Courtney said. Financial contributions to base projects by state government also bode well for the future, he said.

Submarine funding passes key hurdle
By Jennifer McDermott
Published 04/25/2012

House subcommittee OKs money for second Virginia-class boat in 2014
The effort to restore a second Virginia-class submarine in the plans for 2014 cleared a major hurdle Wednesday when a congressional subcommittee included funding for it in a defense spending bill, U.S. Reps. Joe Courtney and James Langevin announced.
In its version of the bill that authorizes appropriations for fiscal 2013, the subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee included $778 million to purchase parts with long lead times for the second submarine.
The president’s proposed budget calls for building one Virginia-class submarine in 2014 instead of two and two submarines in 2018 instead of one to save money now.
The subcommittee still wants the Navy to order two submarines in 2018 — the bill would give the Navy the contracting authority for a five-year block of up to 10 new submarines instead of capping the total at 9.
The Navy would also be able to pay for the parts and services for the submarines over a set number of years instead of having to fully fund the ships upfront. The incremental funding approach has been used with aircraft carriers but not submarines.
Courtney, D-2nd District, and Langevin, a Democrat from Rhode Island, said the funding for the second submarine still has a long way to go in the budget process. Their colleagues in the House could cut it or the Senate could not support it.
But they were both optimistic since this subcommittee is where the successful effort to build two submarines a year instead of one began in 2007.
“Tomorrow begins another journey to make sure the strategic needs of the country, in terms of having a strong undersea fleet, are met,” Courtney said Wednesday in a conference call.
The subcommittee votes on Thursday and the bill will head to the full committee. Courtney expects the House to vote in late May.
Langevin said Navy officials have said if the advanced procurement funding is restored and incremental funding is allowed, they can pay for the second submarine in 2014 and increase the order from nine to 10. He said this is an important issue for national security and for jobs in Rhode Island and Connecticut.
The work on the second submarine in 2014 represents about 2 million man hours annually for five years at Electric Boat’s facilities in Groton and Quonset Point in Rhode Island and at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia — enough work to keep 800 to 1,000 people busy.
Delaying the purchase of the submarine would force layoffs and add an estimated $600 million to the cost of the program since labor and parts will cost more four years later and disrupting the schedule creates inefficiencies, which lead to higher costs, according to EB. Company spokesman Robert Hamilton said Wednesday that it’s too soon to comment on the budget.
j.mcdermott@theday.com

See the video at the link below:

Rep. Courtney: Student loan hike “unconscionable” given challenges facing young people – Jansing and Co. 

Griswold students stirred by vet’s tales of WWII
By Jeffrey A. Johnson

Publication: The Day

Griswold – The images of a 3½-year imprisonment are still fresh in the mind of 92-year-old Ernest “Ernie” Plantz.
“For the first month, our food was a stale hamburger bun,” Plantz said of his early days as a prisoner of war. “Then it was rice once a day. … It was never enough to satisfy you. You were always hungry.”
All told, Plantz spent 1,297 days in captivity during World War II. A submariner and Navy man, he was taken as a prisoner after his sub, the USS Perch (SS-176), was sunk by an enemy convoy in the Java Sea.
Plantz was held by the Japanese at a former Dutch Army camp, where he escaped disease and death, until he was finally rescued and allowed to return home to his family.
Ever since, Plantz, now of Gales Ferry, has shared how his faith in God and his country carried him through the most harrowing times of his life. He did this again on Monday afternoon for the entire junior and senior classes at Griswold High School as part of the Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project.
U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, interviewed Plantz, and the one-hour interview was taped.
Created in 2000, the project aims to capture the accounts of veterans who have served in various wars ranging from World War I to the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts.
Videotapes and other correspondence – letters, postcards, photographs and more – will be cataloged in an effort to preserve these memories for others to learn from. Griswold students will soon begin their part of the project by finding veterans in the community to interview.
“We’ve been trying to infuse a connection between the community and the military,” said Betsy Kowal, a civics teacher who helped organize the Veterans History Project at the school. “We felt this was a cool way for them to hear it first-hand.”
Plantz told of the three nerve-racking days he spent with his crew submerged on the Perch as depth charges slowly destroyed the sub. Eventually, the crew of 53 submariners abandoned ship and went into the water.
Once in captivity, Plantz was forced to perform manual labor. The beatings were often severe; in one instance, he said he was beaten 75 times with a club. In sharing the details, he pointed to Courtney’s dark dress slacks to give an example of how black his backside was after the beating.
A bout with dysentery and malaria in January 1945 also nearly killed Plantz. He said he was unconscious for six days and received an injection from a Dutch doctor, another prisoner, that helped bring him to. He dwindled to about 80 pounds during the ordeal, down from the healthy 175 he was when he enlisted.
Students seemed intrigued by Plantz’s words and gave him a huge round of applause that clearly moved him. Coincidentally, a makeshift ship, part of the set left over from the school play “Anything Goes,” served as the backdrop for Plant’s interview on the school auditorium stage.
“It was so incredible just to listen to him,” said junior Taylor Chaffee, who said her mother is stationed at the Army base in Fort Drum, N.Y., and that she hopes to join the Marine Corps.
Kowal and Phil Anctil, the in-school suspension coordinator, said the plan is for students to interview 30 veterans. The exercise will also be a way for students interested in serving in the military to learn what the life is like.
“We really want them to hear it from the horse’s mouth,” Anctil said. “They’ll see the benchmark of what they’ll have to do. A picture is worth a thousand words.”
jeff.johnson@theday.com

Don’t let GOP block college loan help
Published 04/23/2012

It is good to see President Obama getting behind the effort launched by Second District Rep. Joe Courtney to prevent the interest rates on federal student loans from doubling on July 1 to 6.8 percent.

The Connecticut Democrat introduced a bill that will keep interest rates at 3.4 percent. On Friday the White House announced that the president will travel this week to the universities of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Colorado, and Iowa to push for approval of the legislation introduced by Rep. Courtney. The bill now has 127 co-sponsors.

The New York Times reports that the White House plans a sustained campaign to fight for the measure, with President Obama referencing it in his radio address Saturday after Education Secretary Arne Duncan discussed the proposal with the Washington press corps Friday.

The average student using federal loans will rack up an additional $1,000 in debt annually after graduation if Congress allows the doubling of the interest rates, the administration contends.

Rep. Courtney has been out in front on this critical issue and it’s about time the Obama administration began roasting Republicans in Congress for their recalcitrance about helping out struggling students and their families.

In 2007 Congress approved the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007, which cut the then-rate of 6.8 percent to the current 3.4 percent, but with an expiration date of July 1, 2012. Back then the proposal received significant bipartisan support, with 77 Republicans voting in favor, many of them still in the House. This time around, showing how intransigent Republicans in Congress have become in supporting any legislation that is remotely progressive, not one member of the GOP has come forward in support.

Rep. John P. Kline Jr., the Minnesota Republican who chairs the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said he cannot support “piling billions of dollars on the backs of taxpayers.”

What a profoundly hypocritical argument.

Rep. Kline had no problem voting in favor of a big tax cut for business owners. Under that bill, small business owners (500 employees or less) would be allowed to deduct 20 percent of their income taxes up to 50 percent of their W-2 wages. It’s the scheme of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in his never-ending quest to make the well off better off.

The ostensible motivation for the tax break is to create jobs, but there is no provision for those receiving the tax breaks to do anything other than stick the money in their pockets. And it’s a one-time deal, so what is the motivation to hire new workers? The Joint Tax Committee, the objective scorekeeper on such matters, concluded the job-creation value would be “so small as to be incalculable.”

Even the business-friendly Tax Foundation criticized the Cantor bill, concluding it could be “easily gamed” while doing little if anything to create jobs. The giveaway would blow another $46 billion hole in the budget, and Republicans offer no offset to make it up.

But Rep. Kline contends the nation cannot afford to help college students obtain federal loans with reasonable rates at a time of record low interest rates? Estimates of the cost of maintaining the current interest rate on the subsidized Stafford loans range from $4 billion to $6 billion a year.

Credit Rep. Courtney with not forgetting his campaign promises. Campaigning at the University of Connecticut in 2006, Mr. Courtney vowed to help students afford the means to pay for college. The election thrust him into Congress with a razor-thin 83-vote victory. Rep. Courtney took Mansfield, home to UConn, by a 4,397 to 1,753 margin. In one his first acts in Congress he backed the interest-rate cut that he now seeks to defend.

College-aged voters can play an important role in elections, a fact Rep. Courtney recognized back in 2006 and which the White House appears to be paying attention to now.

Student Loan Interest Rates Loom as Political Battle
By TAMAR LEWIN
Published: April 20, 2012

President Obama begins an all-out push on Friday to get Congress to extend the low interest rate on federal student loans, White House officials said, an effort that is likely to become a heated battle along party lines. If Congress fails to act, the interest rate on the loans, which are taken out by nearly eight million students each year, will double on July 1, to 6.8 percent.

White House officials said the president was planning a sustained effort through the spring: On Friday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan will discuss the issue at a White House briefing, and on Saturday in his weekly address, the president will call on Congress to pass legislation preventing the rate hike.

Next week, Mr. Obama will again hammer the issue — during visits on Tuesday to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Colorado at Boulder, and on Wednesday at the University of Iowa. The White House also plans a social media campaign through Facebook, Google+ and Twitter, using the hashtag #DontDoubleMyRate.

At a time when Americans owe more on student loans than on credit cards — student debt is topping $1 trillion for the first time — and the Occupy movement has highlighted the rising furor over spiraling student debt, the issue has moved higher on the political agenda. But the question of what to do about the looming interest rate increase has landed deep in the chasm separating Democrats from Republicans, who accuse the president of using the issue in a fiscally irresponsible way, in an attempt to buy the youth vote.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that a one-year freeze on the interest rate for subsidized Stafford loans would cost $6 billion.

“Bad policy based on lofty campaign promises has put us in an untenable situation,” said John P. Kline Jr., the Minnesota Republican who is chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

The low interest rate stemmed from the 2007 College Cost Reduction and Access Act, which reduced interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans over the following four academic years — from 6.8 percent to the current 3.4 percent — with the proviso that the rates would revert to 6.8 percent this July. Extending the low rate would be too costly, Mr. Kline said. “We must now choose between allowing interest rates to rise or piling billions of dollars on the backs of taxpayers,” he said. “I have serious concerns about any proposal that simply kicks the can down the road and creates more uncertainty in the long run — which is what put us in this situation in the first place.”

Mr. Kline, who earlier this year called the interest-rate hike a “ticking time bomb set by Democrats,” said he was exploring other options in hopes of finding a solution that served borrowers and taxpayers equally well.

When the 2007 law was passed, 77 Republicans — most of whom are still in Congress — voted for it. But in the current climate of fractious partisanship, new legislation introduced by Representative Joe Courtney to extend the lower rate has 127 co-sponsors, all of them Democrats.

Mr. Courtney said he was hopeful that some Republican support would be forthcoming as the political stakes became more apparent.

“The visibility of this issue is going to continue to grow as we get closer to the deadline,” he said. “The response of students and parents is one of disbelief that interest is going to double at a time when interest rates are so low, and I think it’s very politically dangerous for Republicans to stonewall this.”

Rich Williams, the higher education advocate for U.S. Public Interest Research Group, said he thought about 14 moderate Republican senators might support the effort to keep the interest rates down.

“This should be a bipartisan issue,” he said. “It’s something everyone gets.”

Outside Congress, even some of the strongest student-aid advocates debate the question. While nearly everyone is in favor of the broad goal of college affordability, some experts wonder whether it is worth risking cutbacks in the Pell program for low-income students, a possible result of using more federal money to keep interest rates low on the Stafford loans, which are in wide use by middle-income students.

But student advocacy groups say it is wrong to view financing for Pells and Staffords as a zero-sum competition.

Enfield — Joe Courtney held up the poster-sized chart and pointed to the numbers printed in purple: 7,700 seniors in his Eastern Connecticut district got a discount on their prescription drug payments last year, thanks to federal health reform. That included 530 seniors from Enfield, where he had come to chat at the senior center, 143 in neighboring Suffield and hundreds more in several other towns listed on the chart.

“This chart shows that there is improvement that’s happening to the system,” the congressman told the audience of 50 or so seniors. He noted that the health reform law is phasing out the Medicare “doughnut hole” that requires seniors to pay for drugs out-of-pocket once their plan has covered a certain amount, but he added that it will take time before all their costs are gone.

Courtney and his chart showing how many seniors in his district got drug discounts from the health reform law

“I’m not going to sit here and do a victory dance in the end zone like a football player spiking the football saying the problems are all gone for everybody,” Courtney said. “We’re not at that point.”

If this were a re-election speech, it wasn’t much of a rousing argument. But Courtney has been on a different sort of campaign: pointing out the benefits of the controversial Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The third-term congressman from Vernon hasn’t missed many chances to tout the upsides of a law that many of his fellow Democrats have not gone out of their way to promote. Courtney brought a primary care doctor to town hall meetings last year to talk about patients whose cancers were discovered because of free wellness visits that Medicare now covers because of health reform. He’s delivered floor speeches to point out what he considers positive developments from the law, about which Americans remain divided, according to national surveys.

After the law passed, Courtney remained a vocal supporter of health reform “at a time when a lot of other people were kind of running away from it,” said Dr. Robert McLean, a New Haven internist and rheumatologist who serves as governor of the American College of Physicians’ Connecticut chapter.

The group, which represents internists, named Courtney legislator of the year last fall “to recognize his willingness to be such a vocal supporter of health reform efforts,” McLean said.

Courtney said his continued talk about health reform is a way to analyze what was and wasn’t true in the contentious debates that took place at town hall meetings across the country when Congress debated the issue in 2009, when he said seniors were subjected to “some of the most scurrilous, misleading claims.” He likes to point to what he calls “real data,” like the numbers on his chart showing how many seniors in various towns got discounts on prescription drugs, or the story of a community health center in Windham that benefited from funds in the health reform law.

“To me, those town-by-town numbers are exactly what Tip O’Neill would tell any member of Congress to go out and talk about,” Courtney said, referring to the former Speaker of the House known for declaring that all politics is local. “Because I truly believe that when you localize information such as the prescription drug benefits, the health center in Windham, which just cut a ribbon the other day, and tie it to the health care reform law, that’s just smart representation.”

Not everyone agrees with Courtney’s assessment of the law, or his reasons for touting it. Daria Novak, a Madison Republican running for the 2^nd District Congressional seat, said she hears from people in the district with concerns about health reform, particularly business owners who are unsure about its impact and wary about hiring while they’re uncertain.

“My guess is the reason that Congressman Courtney is talking about this issue so much is that the people in the 2^nd District are very upset about Obamacare,” she said. “I believe that Congressman Courtney is trying to defend himself and justify why he voted for this bill.”

Like Novak, Republican candidate Christopher Coutu, a state representative from Norwich, favors repealing health reform. His campaign manager, Chris Covucci, said the law will lead to cuts in Medicare spending and the Department of Defense, which could hurt the region’s defense industry and lead to military base closings, taking away jobs.

“Joe Courtney has lost sight of how to grow jobs in Connecticut,” Covucci said. ”And ultimately, it will be jobs, not the government, that provide health care and stability for working families.”

And Novak said that Courtney will have little choice but to talk about health reform if she wins the Republican nomination.

“[Courtney] will be talking about this because we are going to bring the issue up,” she said.

A campaign issue?

In an election year expected to focus largely on the economy, will other candidates follow Courtney’s lead as the elections approach, or keep quiet about health reform?

Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said certain elected officials will be happy to talk about health reform: Republicans in safe districts, where the law is a rallying cry and politicians can pledge to repeal and replace it, and some Democrats in districts where it will generate positive feedback.

But Ornstein predicted that Republicans in contested districts will likely avoid talking about the law because they don’t want people to ask what they’d replace it with. And some Democrats will likely be reluctant to address it for other reasons.

“One, because we know it’s met with at best lukewarm approval,” he said. “Two, because I think where Democrats talk about health, they’d much rather talk about Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan.”

Congress’ approval rating hovers around 10 percent, making it less potent for incumbents to tout their accomplishments than to accuse the other side of threatening to destroy something popular, Ornstein said — in this case, Republican Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan to shift Medicare from an entitlement in which the government pays the medical bills to one in which the government gives seniors money to buy insurance.

For Democrats that do campaign on health reform, Ornstein said they’ll likely focus on the elements of the law that have proven popular and what Republicans would do if they repealed the measure. Those include a provision allowing young people to remain on their parents’ health insurance until turning 26 and requirements that insurers offer coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

Courtney noted that the law does not seem to carry the same emotional resonance as it did in 2009, when Congress was debating proposals and town hall meetings drew protests and people scared that it would hurt Medicare.

The tone at Courtney’s appearance last week in Enfield, the site of a contentious 2009 meeting, was decidedly calmer. People in the audience listened as Courtney and Christie Hager, regional director for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, spoke about health reform and Medicare. Some audience members asked about Medicare coverage and how the U.S. Supreme Court or a new presidential administration could affect health reform. The most impassioned exchanges involved why Medicare doesn’t cover dental care, or disparities between Medicare Advantage plans and traditional Medicare.

The difference in tone doesn’t mean everyone is sold on the law, Courtney said. “There’s still, I think, a lot of concern people have,” he said. “The jury’s still out for a lot of people, but it does not have the same emotional response that it did in 2009.”

That could change this summer, he added, when the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on a challenge to the law’s mandate that most Americans have health insurance.

The root of his interest

Asked about the root of his interest in health care, Courtney, a lawyer, noted that he had to purchase insurance when he was a small employer. He had a brother who died of cancer at 26. Although his brother had health insurance, Courtney said the experience taught him that “we all have clay feet and that not having a system that provides that basic level of security is just really unacceptable for a country.”

His wife, Audrey, is a nurse practitioner who gives him exposure to a more expert viewpoint. And he says the year he spent in England during college gave him a chance to see how another system worked.

“But to me, at the end of the day, this is really an issue about justice,” he said. “It really is about whether or not a society or a country like ours can have some basic level of provision for something that we all need as humans.”

Read Congressman Courtney’s Op Ed in the Huffington Post.

Don’t Let Student Loan Rates Double

By Congressman Joe Courtney and Senator Jack Reed

Education should not be the province of the lucky few, but the right of every American with skill and determination. Given the opportunity to better themselves through higher education, individuals can provide for their families and strengthen our nation.

A college degree is becoming more essential than ever. In 1980, the gap between the lifetime earnings of a college graduate and a high school graduate was 40 percent. In 2010, it was 74 percent. By 2025, it is projected to be 96 percent.

But with college tuition skyrocketing and the purchasing power of federal financial aid receding, the doors of opportunity are closing on more of today’s students. This is driving young Americans to assume historically high levels of student debt and impeding their climb up the income ladder.

To put this in perspective, tuition rates at four-year colleges and universities have risen over 32 percent in the last decade, and last year Americans took out more than $100 billion in student loans for the first time in our history. Student loan debt now exceeds credit card debt in the United States, creating an immense burden that will last years after graduation.

The problem will only get worse if Congress does not act soon. On July 1, 2012, interest rates on subsidized Stafford student loans — one of the few programs that is affordable for students and families — will double, from 3.4 to 6.8 percent. In no uncertain terms, this would be another hit to middle-class and working-families, and a de facto tax increase on as many as 10 million people.

According to the non-partisan U.S. Public Interest Research Groups (PIRG), if Congress does nothing, borrowers taking out the maximum $23,000 in subsidized student loans will see their interest balloon by an estimated $5,000 over a 10-year repayment period and $11,000 over a 20-year repayment period.

Now, students who took out loans have a responsibility to pay them back. But the government shouldn’t balloon payments at a time when our economy is still struggling to climb back from the worst recession in generations.

To ease the financial challenge of paying for college, we have introduced legislation in the House and the Senate to prevent interest rates on these student loans from doubling this year. Our bill would permanently cap Stafford student loan interest rates at a reasonable and consistent 3.4 percent for low-and moderate-income students.

Student loans should be an investment that pays off, and can be reasonably paid off. Failing to pass this legislation will make it harder for smart, hard-working Americans to join and stay in the middle-class.

Making college more affordable is key to unlocking America’s economic competitiveness. Business leaders know it is vital for young Americans to get an education beyond high school. If today’s students cannot afford college, businesses will not have the workers with the education and training they need to keep our economy competitive and dynamic far into the future.

Under President Obama’s leadership, Congress overhauled the college student loan program — ending a flawed system that gave away billions in federal subsidies to private banks that simply acted as middle-men and putting those taxpayer dollars directly in the hands of students to pay for their education.

Now we need to take the next step and prevent this looming rate hike.

Nothing contributes to America’s economy or helps people overcome economic hardship and fulfill their promise more than a good education.

Making college more affordable is one of the best investments our nation can make in America’s economic future.

Lets stop this rate hike and ensure financial aid opportunities afforded today will also be available to future students. Please join us in this effort by contacting your Congressman or Senator and asking them to stop the student loan rate hike.