September 6, 2007 | Read Time: 2 minutes
The House of Representatives has passed a bill that would allow some charity workers to get their student-loan debt forgiven, and nonprofit groups are hoping to persuade the Senate to go along as Congress works out a compromise bill this fall.
Both houses passed bills in July that would allow people who have held “public sector” or “public service” jobs for 10 years to erase their student-loan balances.
The House bill specifically includes nonprofit jobs in that category, but the Senate version does not and is designed mainly to cover government employees, teachers, law-enforcement officials, and public-health workers.
The Nonprofit Sector Workforce Coalition — composed of more than 50 nonprofit groups, foundations, associations, and academic centers — is urging its members to lobby Congress to adopt the House language after it returns from its summer recess in early September.
That could help ease one of the main barriers that keep young people from choosing relatively low-paying nonprofit careers, said Audrey Alvarado, executive director of the National Council of Nonprofit Associations, a coalition member. “They tell us now they have to make choices,” she said. “They would love to work in the nonprofit sector, but they have looming loans they have to start paying off when they graduate.”
The House and Senate proposals are included in a package of measures (known as H.R. 2669 in both houses) to make college more affordable by shifting some subsidies that now go to private student-loan lenders into grants and offering more-attractive loan terms.
The bills would expand an existing program that allows people to pay back their student loans according to a formula that takes their income into account and forgives any remaining debt after 25 years.
The new language would forgive the loans of people who have worked 10 years at a “public sector” (or, in the Senate version, “public service”) job.
The House definition includes jobs at nonprofit legal-advocacy groups and organizations recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as tax-exempt charities. The Senate version of the bill does not.
The benefit would apply only to loans that are made or guaranteed by the federal government.
Kenneth J. Goldsmith, legislative counsel for the American Bar Association, which supports the language to include nonprofit groups, said some members of Congress are worried about the cost of including so many different types of organizations.
