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Message to the Congress Requesting Emergency Legislation for Continuation of the Guaranteed Student Loan Program.

August 16, 1972

To the Congress of the United States:

In recent years, a major source of aid to students attending post-secondary schools has been the Guaranteed Student Loan Program. During the year ending this past June 30, over 1,000,000 students were able to borrow $1.3 billion to finance their education. Over 8,000 schools and 20,000 financial institutions are currently participating.

Support of this program has been bipartisan. It was created under the Administration of President Johnson, and it has been expanded and improved by the present Administration.

However, some provisions of the "Education Amendments of 1972," because of ambiguities in the language of the legislation, have had an unintended effect of raising the possibility that many thousands of students who have benefitted under the subsidized loan portion of the program in the past may not be able to obtain the loans they are counting on to return to school this fall.

We are doing everything possible in the regulations implementing the law to avoid this result, which was intended neither by the Administration nor by the Congress. But uncertainty remains. Because we are at the peak of the borrowing season under this program, I request that the Congress enact emergency legislation that would delay the implementation of the troublesome section of the law--specifically that it amend Section 132C(1), so that the lenders could continue to provide loans on the same basis as they did last year.

This would make it possible for students, parents, schools, and lenders to use a system with which they are all familiar, and which has served the students well. It would make it possible for students to obtain loans in time to go to school-which after all is the purpose of the program.

RICHARD NIXON

THE WHITE HOUSE,

August 16, 1972.

Richard Nixon, Message to the Congress Requesting Emergency Legislation for Continuation of the Guaranteed Student Loan Program. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/254715

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