Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin push for vote on student loan refinancing bill

As Congress goes back to Washington for a brief fall session and students head back to college for the fall semester, U.S. Senate Democrats doubled down Wednesday on an effort to help students refinance their loans.

A trio of senators took questions from college reporters on several of their boldest reforms. One of the measures, the In the Red Act, is authored by U.S. Sens. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and would help college graduates refinance their loans and re-up the number of Pell grants available.

“Our hope is, of course, to have everyone aspire to higher education and we’ve got to fix this to give hope to the next generation too,” Baldwin said.

Baldwin said that while components of the legislation could be crafted into stand-alone bills, they would first attempt to pack the comprehensive legislation.

U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, called on Republicans to schedule a vote on the bill, saying they brought no ideas to the table on the issue and that they were in denial a student debt problem even exists.

“The Republicans have no ideas,” Schatz said. “This is the equivalent of being climate change deniers. They deny a problem exists and abdicate their responsibility.”

Introduced in January, the bill has been stagnant in the Senate Finance Committee, chaired by U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. A committee spokesperson did not return comment on the status of the bill, but Republicans have previously criticized the measure as being too costly.