The President of the United States:
For months, I’ve been pushing Congress to pass several common-sense ideas that will help us do that. And on Friday, I signed into law a bill that will do two things for the American people.
First, it will keep thousands of construction workers on the job rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure.
Second, it will keep interest rates on federal student loans from doubling this year – which would have hit more than seven million students with about a thousand dollars more on their loan payments.
Those steps will make a real difference in the lives of millions of Americans. But make no mistake: we’ve got more to do.
The construction industry was hit brutally hard when the housing bubble burst. So it’s not enough to just keep construction workers on the job doing projects that were already underway.
For months, I’ve been calling on Congress to take half the money we’re no longer spending on war and use it to do some nation-building here at home. There’s work to be done building roads and bridges and wireless networks. And there are hundreds of thousands of construction workers ready to do it.
The same thing is true for our students. The bill I’m about to sign is vital for millions of students and their families. But it’s not enough to just keep their student loan rates from doubling.
