Obama takes on college costs, eyes young voters

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama waves as he boards Air Force One Tues­day at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., en route to North Car­olina. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Car­olyn Kaster)

BEN FELLER

AP White House Correspondent

MORRISVILLE, N.C. — Woo­ing young vot­ers, Pres­i­dent Barack Obama is on a blitz to keep the cost of col­lege loans from soar­ing for mil­lions of stu­dents, tak­ing his mes­sage to three states strate­gi­cally impor­tant to his re-election bid. By tak­ing on stu­dent debt, Obama is speak­ing to middle-class Amer­ica and tar­get­ing an enor­mous bur­den that threat­ens the eco­nomic recovery.

Before Obama got his road trip under way, Repub­li­can oppo­nent Mitt Rom­ney found a way to steal some thun­der from the president’s cam­paign argu­ment: He agreed with it.

The com­peti­tors are now on record for freez­ing the cur­rent inter­est rates on a pop­u­lar fed­eral loan for poorer and middle-class stu­dents. The issue is loom­ing because the rate will dou­ble from 3.4 per­cent to 6.8 per­cent on July 1 with­out inter­ven­tion by Con­gress, an expi­ra­tion date cho­sen in 2007 when a Demo­c­ra­tic Con­gress voted to chop the rate in half.

Obama is head­ing to cam­puses in the South, West and Mid­west to sell his mes­sage to col­leges audi­ences bound to sup­port it. As he pres­sures Repub­li­cans in Con­gress to act, he will also be try­ing to ener­gize the young peo­ple essen­tial to his cam­paign — those who voted for him last time and the many more who have turned vot­ing age since then.

The pres­i­dent speaks Tues­day at the Uni­ver­sity of North Car­olina at Chapel Hill and the Uni­ver­sity of Col­orado at Boul­der, and then the Uni­ver­sity of Iowa on Wednes­day. All three uni­ver­si­ties are in states that Obama car­ried in 2008, and all three states are con­sid­ered among the sev­eral that could swing to Obama or Rom­ney and help decide a close 2012 election.

Both cam­paigns are fight­ing for the sup­port of vot­ers buried in col­lege debt. The national debt amassed on stu­dent loans is higher than that for credit cards or auto loans.

The Fed­eral Reserve Bank of New York has esti­mated about 15 per­cent of Amer­i­cans, or 37 mil­lion peo­ple, have out­stand­ing stu­dent loan debt. The banks put the total at $870 bil­lion, though other esti­mates have reached $1 tril­lion. About two-thirds of stu­dent loan debt is held by peo­ple under 30.

Obama, pre­view­ing the mes­sage he will give at all three col­leges, said over the week­end that allow­ing the inter­est rates to dou­ble this sum­mer would hurt more than 7 mil­lion stu­dents. The White House said it would cost stu­dents $1,000, based on the aver­age amount bor­rowed a year ($4,200) and the aver­age time it takes to pay the loan (12 years).

“That would be a tremen­dous blow,” Obama said. “And it’s com­pletely preventable.”

Rom­ney agreed with that con­clu­sion even in the midst of blast­ing Obama’s eco­nomic lead­er­ship. “Given the bleak job prospects that young Amer­i­cans com­ing out of col­lege face today, I encour­age Con­gress to tem­porar­ily extend the low rate,” Rom­ney said in a statement.

White House spokesman Jay Car­ney said the admin­is­tra­tion wel­comed sup­port for freez­ing the inter­est rate from any Repub­li­can. But Car­ney said it was “ironic” that a Repub­li­can could both back the inter­est rate freeze and sup­port a bud­get pro­posal from Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., that the White House says would dou­ble the stu­dent loan inter­est rate freeze.

Rom­ney has said he is “very sup­port­ive” of the Ryan budget.

With Rom­ney all but cer­tain to sweep the five Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial pri­maries being held Tues­day, the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor planned a defin­i­tive pivot toward the gen­eral elec­tion, with a speech in New Hamp­shire titled “A Bet­ter Amer­ica Begins Tonight.”

The stu­dent loan rate freeze Obama and Rom­ney are cham­pi­oning amounts to a one-year, election-year fix at a cost of roughly $6 bil­lion. Con­gress seems headed that way. Mem­bers of both par­ties are assess­ing ways to cover the costs and win the votes in the House and Sen­ate, which is far from a polit­i­cal cer­tainty. All par­ties involved have polit­i­cal incen­tive to keep the rates as they are.

Obama car­ried vot­ers between the ages of 18–29 by a mar­gin of about 2-to-1 in 2008, but many recent col­lege grad­u­ates have faced high lev­els of unem­ploy­ment. That raises con­cerns for the pres­i­dent about whether they will vote and vol­un­teer for him in such large num­bers again.

Posted by AP News on Apr 24 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.