Here is President Clinton campaigning in Baker City, Oregon on May 11th taking education and low interest loans for students. This is an issue near and dear to my heart and it is not a new one. Both President Clinton and Senator Clinton have made it a priority to tackle the student loans companies by having the government directly involved in making student loans. When I was in graduate school, I received a 4.25% loan. Rates today are more than twice that and the costs of college education have soared five fold since I was in college.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has had some tough words for the college student loan industry, saying banks and other lenders had “ripped off” students with high interest rates and repayment plans that were onerous on recent graduates and their families.

“I want to get rid of the student loan companies,” Mrs. Clinton said at an event in Sioux City, as she laid out her college affordability plan in response to a parent’s concern about high tuition prices. “I kept working and I got a little scholarship, and I borrowed money from the government at 2% interest.”

“I’m asking myself, why are we making it so expensive and costly for families today?” she continued. “I also want to eliminate the complicated form that families have to fill out. I don’t know how many of you have had to fill out those forms, it takes dozens and dozens of pages.”

Mrs. Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, battled the student loan industry in the 1990s as he championed the Federal Direct Loan Program, which eliminated for-profit lenders as the middlemen for students in that program. And an ally of Mrs. Clinton’s, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, has been waging legal fights against several lenders, accusing them of unscrupulous tactics to bilk students.

Mrs. Clinton also supports the direct loan program, and she has also called for a “student borrower’s bill of rights.” According to her campaign website, this proposal would “make it easier for students to repay loans and give them a basic set of enforceable rights.

“It would give student borrowers the right to fair monthly payments that do not exceed a percentage of their incomes, as well as access to fair interest rates and fees. The bill would also give students the right to shop in a free marketplace for their lender and to borrow without exploitation. Finally, the bill will give students access to better information about their loans to provide students with better options during repayment.”

Do you hear Obama talk about issues like this? And college kids are voting for him in record numbers? Youth is wasted on the young.