Screw that. I just paid off 70K of student loan debt in two years. Is the gov't going to reimburse me for that?

Seriously, me too. People, you took on the debt, pay it back. Everyone thinks they are entitled to a bailout of their own. You decided to take on that debt, you signed on the dotted line. Be responsible for your own actions and pay for it.

Not that a facebook petition/online petition is going to be too influential.

Bullcrap. I'll bet Obama checks it regularly on his Blackberry.

There's currently a federal program that if you work for 10 years in public service (which includes working in a federal, state, local or tribal government position, working for a public interest law organization, or a 501(c)(3) organization), and if you make your payments on time for 10 consecutive years, you qualify for debt forgiveness. You have to consolidate your debt under one of the federal repayment programs (i.e. not consolidate under a private lender). I know there are even better programs in some states (and that some schools, including Yale, I believe, have their own programs), and there are law students lobbying for better programs in most of the other states (including CT), for those who want to go into public interest law without having to take a second job at Starbucks.

I can see the wisdom of those types of loan forgiveness programs, especially in public interest law where they're having a hard time finding good young lawyers, or they're losing good attorneys after a couple of years because of financial issues.

Something like this wouldn't affect me a whole lot personally, as I've worked full-time throughout undergrad and law school to minimize loans. But, as noted above, I think it's pretty drastic and would have no chance of being enacted.

This goes into something else that kind of annoys me about this new batch of kids...they think that since the Obamas had student loans, that they're more "sympathetic" to those who have loans. Maybe he is, but I'm not, and I had loans too.

It could be, if everybody wanted to pay a whole lot more in taxes. Everything could be free if we turned over all of our money to the government and they doled out stuff. But, we're not a socialist society. Many of the places where such education is free, people are also told what they will study. We tend to like our freedom to major in whatever we want.

I never said I agreed with the petition.... I'm personally for a plan where interest rates are capped at 1-2 percent. But this is something that is out there, and it exists, and this is the news and politics section, so I wanted to see what peoples ideas where.

I'm not saying, give me a free ride, and I'm not saying I want the gov't to pay for my loans. I'm willing to pay back my loans, that's why I work and go to school full time. I'm just asking for people's opinion.

The halo will fade. Give it time.

This is a horrible idea. Not only are you wasting billions of dollars that should either be spent on some sort of sustainable public works project or not spent at all, but you're also setting a precedent for people to carelessly borrow money.

This might be the first time I agree with you. There are already too many people who run up insane amounts of credit card debt without thinking about the ramifications. Why cancel what is considered good debt?

If you file bankruptcy, you still have to pay your student loans. The government is not going to forgive all student loan debt.

You'll probably laugh, but the halo has faded for me.

I was thinking the exact same thing!

I choose to become a teacher. I does suck that I need a BA degree to teach and I earn less than some people who don't even have degrees, but that just shows that we have a messed up system.

As someone else said earlier, in most states there is a teacher forgiveness loan program, but you have to meet their strict criteria of what is a critical need area, it changes every year, and they want you to usually teach an urban school.

I gave him a chance, but after this stimulus debacle, and the Keynesian boondoggles to come, come election time, only the true believers will still be supporting him. The only way he gets a second term is if Sarah Palin wins the Republican nomination.

(I think I threw up in my mouth just a bit)

LOL I was thinking the same thing. I'm a year or two away from having all of my loans paid off, and I'd be PISSED if the gov't now stepped in to erase the debt of the millenials, who haven't even begun to understand what it means to be a responsible, bill-paying adult.