What's a country to do? Fifteen percent of Americans owe $870 billion in student loans, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and about two-thirds who hold the loans are under age 30.
President Barack Obama and GOP opponent Mitt Romney seem to agree on the answer.
They are now on record for freezing the current interest rates on a popular federal loan for poorer and middle-class students. The issue is looming because the rate will double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1 without intervention by Congress, an expiration date chosen in 2007 when a Democratic Congress voted to chop the rate in half.
Obama is taking his message this week to three states strategically important to his re-election bid. By taking on student debt, Obama is speaking to middle-class America and targeting an enormous burden that threatens the economic recovery.
Before Obama got his road trip under way, Romney found a way to steal some thunder from the president's campaign argument: He agreed with it.