Lower School Loans To Match Wall Street Interest Rates, Holt Says

U.S. Rep. Rush Holt (D-12) took another swing at Wall Street in a Senate campaign ad released Monday.

In "Student Loans," Holt champions a piece of legislation sponsored by progressive Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren that calls for matching student loan interest rates to the 0.75 percent rate charged to Wall Street banks.

Holt cites a 13 percent unemployment rate for recent college grads, an average student load debt burden of $27,000 and that the average starting wage of recent grads is lower than it was in 1998.

"So if students are still reeling from Wall Street blunders," Holt says in the ad. "Why on earth should the government charge them at an interest rate nine times higher than the Federal Reserve charges Wall Street banks?"

Holt proposed a tax on Wall Street computer stock speculation last week.

In a teleconference prior to launching the ad, Holt stopped short of saying that his shots at Wall Street were a veiled attack on Democratic frontrunner Cory Booker, who has been criticized for a cozy relationship with Wall Street.

"I am not tied to Wall Street, even though I have many friends who work on Wall  Street," Holt said. "I don’t mind going up against entrenched interests."  

Holt is running for the U.S. Senate seat of late Sen Frank Lautenberg. He trails Booker, the frontrunner, by more than 40 percentage points in the latest polling. U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-12) and state Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-34) also are running in the Aug. 13 primary election.