President Obama’s Policies Have Failed

Young Americans and Recent College Graduates

• According to the Associated Press, one out of every two recent graduates is unemployed or underemployed

• Graduates lucky enough to find a job will earn 9 percentless than if they had graduated just a few years ago.
  • Recent college grads are more likely to be employed as waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined.

• According to Pew, just 54.3 percent of young adults (ages 18 to 24) have a job – the lowest employment rate since the 1940s.

• Today, 3 out of 10 young adults are living with their parents – the highest level since the 1950s.

Higher Tuition Costs, Higher Student Loan Debt

• College students are paying more in tuition and taking on more student loan debt.

• The cost of a four-year public education has increased by 25 percent under the Obama administration.

• Annual student loan debt has dramatically increasedunder the Obama administration. 
  • At nearly $1 trillion, Americans now owe more on student loans than they owe on their credit cards or auto loans.

Commonsense Solution to Extending Lower Student Loan Rates

• Interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans will soon double, but Congress will act to avoid this increase.

• We got into this hole because in 2010, Democrats raided student aid by diverting $9 billion in college financial aid fundingto pay for an Obamacare slush fund.
  • The federal government typically borrows at 2.8 percent and lends to students at 6.8 percent; the Democrats used almost $9 billion of that “profit” to pay for Obamacare.

• Now Democrats are split on how to pay for this budget shortfall: some want to increase taxes on energy producers, while some want to take money out of Medicare and raise taxes on small businesses.

• Senate and House Republicans have introduced a bill that would end the controversial Obamacare slush fund and apply the savings to a stopgap measure to prevent a rate increase on new Stafford loans and deficit reduction.