Page 4 - Student Loan Programs News Today

The country. our high school graduation rate is the highest that its been in more than 30 years. [ applause ] thats an achievement. the dropout rate among latino students has been cut in half since 2000. really big deal. [ applause ] we reformed our student loan programs so that more young people are able to afford to go to college, and now weve got more young people earning a college degree than ever before. teachers and principals across the country are working hard to prepare students like yo...

Condition. if they dont have health insurance they can get it on health cak healthcare.gov. weve made enormous strides changing our student loan programs. millions more get student loans. part of whats happened is that checklist i had when we came into office weve passed a lot of that and were implementing a lot of it. so in no way are my expectations diminished. whats happened is we have a divided government right now. house republicans in particular have had difficulty rallying around any agen...

Because of a pre-existing condition. if they dont have health insurance, they can get it on healthcare.gov. we have made enormous strides on the education front changing our student loan programs so millions more young people get student loans. that checklist i had when i came into office we are working on. but what is obviously true is we have divided government right now. house republicans in particular have had difficulty rallying around any agenda much less mine. and in that kind of environm...

And now youre talking about pen and phone and executive orders and executive actions. do you think you were naive back then or have you recalibrated your expectations and your ambitions? >> well, part of it is, we got a lot of that stuff done. we got, in this country, a health care reform that has already signed up millions of people and make sure that everybody who is watching, anybody who has insurance will not be dropped because of a pre-existing condition. if they dont have health insurance,...

That either college has become out of reach for too many people, or young people are being loaded up with more and more debt. now, weve tried to close that gap. when i came into office, we reformed our financial aid system so the student loan programs were being run through banks, and banks were making billions of dollars on it and we said lets just give the money directly to students, cut out the middle man and we were able to refunnel billions of dollars to provide more students with more gran...

Of the debt was from law school. our undergraduate debt was not as great because tuition had not started shooting up as high. bottom line is this, weve got a crisis in terms of college affordability and student debt. over the past four years, what weve tried to do is take some steps to make college more affordable. so we enacted historic reforms to the student loan system, so taxpayer dollars stop padding the pockets of big banks and, instead, help more kids afford college. what was happening, t...

Alleviate the kind of historical problem of viewing african-americans as inherently criminal. it actually goes way back to the colonial period. its always been with us. so its something that, again, requires education. it requires integration. but the other piece of this is that there has to be an economic component to change that will actually give african-american males in inner cities the belief that they can actually some day find a job. one thing to do in doing all of these other changes is...

You had the war on afghanistan, which i supported and almost all of the members of congress did, because those were the people that attacked us. but then, you had the war in iraq and both afghanistan and iraq were fought as quote emergencies, which means they werent included in the annual deficits. so, now, when theyre talking about a budget that cuts student loan programs for gi members, people coming back from iraq and afghanistan now theyre not getting their student loans. because this was al...

Tax loophole? are you willing to have teachers laid off or kids not have access to headstart? or deeper cuts in student loan programs, just because you want to protect a special tax interest loophole that the vast majority of americans dont benefit from. thats the choice. thats the question. >> joining us now is ezra klein, columnist for the "washington post" and bloomberg news, and our msnbc policy analyst. ezra, its great to have you here. thanks for being here. >> good evening. >> if everybod...

Laid off or kids not have access to head start, or deeper cuts in student loan programs just because you want to protect a special tax interest loophole that the vast majority of americans dont benefit from. thats the choice. thats the question. >> gretchen: i dont understand is, in the debates way back before the election in november, the president said that he wanted to solve this sequester problem. if you are the president of the united states, dont you have the power to figure out how to sol...