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I have previously written about the enormous burden placed on those seeking higher education and its impact on the U.S. economy.

This year’s graduating class has the dubious distinction of paying the most for a college education, and to add salt to the wound, the nation has over $1 trillion dollars in student loan debt.

Billionaire business owner and owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, commented, “It’s inevitable at some point there will be a cap on student loan guarantees. And when that happens you’re going to see a repeat of what we saw in the housing market: when easy credit for buying or flipping a house disappeared we saw a collapse in the price of housing, and we’re going to see that same collapse in the price of student tuition, and that’s going to lead to colleges going out of business.”

Now, with this looming crisis you would think Washington would be tackling this crisis head on.

President Obama stated last month at the White House, “At a time when higher education has never been more important, it’s also never been more expensive.  Over the last three decades, the average tuition at a public university has more than tripled.  At the same time, the typical family’s income has gone up just 16 percent.”

The president speaks of the crisis, but at the same time only focuses on the symptom of the crisis and not on the actual disease of why education costs so much.

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) issued a statement last month saying, “The President is also calling for the Senate to pass Senator Elizabeth Warren’s student loan legislation, which does nothing to address the growing costs of higher education and puts taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars of existing loan debt. During this week’s Senate debate, l look forward to offering alternative higher education reform ideas that will make higher education more affordable and accessible for young Americans.”

The goal should be to make education affordable, but when the Washington Post reported on Hillary Clinton speaking fee’s at various universities; it makes you wonder Washington’s commitment to reducing the cost of education.

On Tuesday, an article in the Washington Post regarding the speaking fee’s given to Hillary Clinton, in one previously undisclosed transaction, the University of Connecticut — which just raised tuition by 6.5 percent — paid $251,250 for Clinton to speak on campus in April.  Other examples include $300,000 to address UCLA in March and $225,000 for a speech scheduled to occur in October at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.  This is hardly a way to reduce to the cost of education.

In the same article the Post reported at UNLV, officials have agreed to raise tuition by 17 percent over the next four years, student government leaders wrote a letter to Clinton last week asking her to return the planned $225,000 fee to the university Elias Benjelloun, UNLV’s student body president stated, “The students are outraged about this.”

Benjelloun continued, “When you see reckless spending, it just belittles the sacrifices students are consistently asked to make. I’m not an accountant or economist, so I can’t put a price tag on how much we should be paying her, but I think she should come for free.”

The average cost of student loan debt is between $25-30,000, which will hamper the growth of the U.S. economy, with students entering a stagnate economy unable to even begin paying back this enormous debt.

A survey by the National Association of Realtors, 49 percent of Americans cited student loan debt as a “huge obstacle” to homeownership.

Rohit Chopra, Assistant Director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (Bureau), in a written testimony before Congress, stated the effects of outstanding student loans have on the economy.

Small business plays a critical role in creating opportunity and wealth in our economy. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, small businesses, defined as an independent entity having fewer than 500 employees, created two-thirds of net new jobs from the third quarter of 2009 through the third quarter of 2012. But student debt may be stymying the efforts of entrepreneurs to sustain and grow their businesses.

Until Washington gets its act together and starts addressing the real cause of student loan debt, the U.S. economy will continue to stagnate into the future.