Congress passed a transportation jobs bill that included a provision allowing the 3.4 percent interest rate for subsidized Stafford loans to stay the same for another year. New loans will not have a doubled interested as dictated by legislation passed five years prior.
This is a major win for students, especially because the average student in America leaves college burdened with several thousands in debt. And the Institute for Higher Education Policy looked at the years 2004-2009 and found that 40 percent of students that started paying off loans are delinquent with their payments sometime during the first five years of repayment.
The passage of this legislation signaled a bizarre semblance of accord among the Democrats and Republicans as it won by a huge margin in both the House and the Senate. It seems like each party wanted to claim the rewards of this bill as its own doing. How touching.
Recently, California just passed a statewide measure titled “Seth’s Law” in honor of Seth Walsh to reduce bullying in schools and gay suicides. The law calls for the establishment of anti-discrimination measures in schools to cover sexuality and gender, among various other social categories.
