With the recent announcement by President Joe Biden about forgiving portions of federal student loans, lawmakers are continuing to comment.

Iowa’s Fourth Congressional District Representative Randy Feenstra was personally angry by the President’s decision because his kids saved and worked to pay off their student loans. He also explains the larger issue is having taxpayers being on the hook for $500 billion.

“Being a ‘fiscal hawk’ I mean I have a real concern about where that money is going to come from. If you just do the pencil and paper to it, that means that every taxpayer would have to pay $2,000 a year for this new program. Not only that, I think it’s completely unconstitutional. You can’t just go down this path without Congress action. You can’t spend a half a trillion dollars without Congress being involved. With our inflation the way it is, this is just really problematic.”   

Instead, Feenstra is advocating for Congress to dramatically lower the interest rates on these college loans and also to consider a bill that he helped to introduce earlier this summer with the Student Act.

“My feeling is it should be a prime rate. Whatever you want to borrow for loans to go to college it should be at the prime lending rate. That’s something that I think everybody can get around saying, ‘Hey this is your amount.’ Then go back to my policy of the Student Act to say, ‘This is going to be your loan, this is going to be your interest, and this is going to be your payment when you get out of college on a monthly basis.’ So everybody knows what they’re getting into before they start that college degree.”

Feenstra believes that there are ways for people who want to get higher education and save money by choosing to go to a two year college before going to a four year university, going to a trade school, or taking dual-enrollment classes while in hi