On Monday, April 29, 2002, Senator Edward M. Kennedy returned to Northeastern to join Massachusetts college students at a press conference denouncing a proposal by President George W. Bush to raise student loan interest rates and cut student loan programs.

The Bush administration proposal would have cut 1.3 billion dollars from the federal student loan program as a part of a 5.2 billion dollar cut to help defray the cost of Bush’s 27.1 billion dollar counterterrorism package. The plan included a proposal by White House budget director Mitchell Daniel to require college graduates wanting to consolidate their student loans to do so at variable interest rates, rather than securing low interest fixed rates.

As Chairman of the Senate’s Heath, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Senator Kennedy assured students, “This will not pass our committees. We will not let that kind of burden [weigh on students]” (Northeastern News, 5/1/02, pg. 5). Senator Kennedy’s official statement regarding the proposal is available on his website.