I don't know why I feel this way but just have this feeling. I think they are going to make the payments lower, a longer time to pay off the loan and then ensure the banks continue to get that interest longer.

Especially considering that this executive order doesn't even go into effect for over a year. You don't worry about "compromise" when you're writing an executive order ....

and I would bet that someone here would know the answer.

When your paybacks are limited to a percentage of your income, and that amount is not enough to cover the interest and principal on a student loan, what happens to the amount not paid? I know that with mortgages that have the "payment cannot rise more than X percent per year", the deferred interest adds to the principal balance, and is itself subject to the interest rate appropriate to the period of time it is borrowed.

Yes, it's nice to be able to pay only ten percent of your income for your student debt (my lady called it 'tithing to the god of higher education') but doesn't it just extend the length of time you're subject to that debt?

"Earlier this afternoon, the President signed a memorandum directing the Secretary of Education to propose regulations that would allow nearly 5 million federal direct student loan borrowers the opportunity to cap their student loan payments at 10 percent of their income. The memorandum also outlines new executive actions to support federal student loan borrowers, especially vulnerable borrowers who may be at greater risk of defaulting on their loans."

source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/06/09/president-obama-student-loan-debt-no-hardworking-young-person-should-be-priced-out-h

So, Duncan is going to "propose regulations". If this is anything like the way Duncan has "reformed education" by making Pearson LLP rich (standardized testing giveaway) then I have little hope that it will actually help borrowers. It will be lower payments over longer periods of time at best.

Further reading and research has shown that other student loan borrowers have this 10% repayment plan, the President was just intending to extend it to a wider group of borrowers.

I would expect that once this goes through, those same rules would apply, and I was curious how folks who already use (or have researched into using) the 10% plans understand them, as far as what it does to the principal amount of the student loan debt.

but the only actual cite I can find is where he hopes the congressional bill is passed so lower rates might be a factor. If you can put up some more articles you find that would be awesome. This is an issue I'd love to see more about - even those of us who "made it" out of poverty are sucked down by these loans. I'd love to see us all get a chance at lower rates and/or longer repayments for middle-high income - and outright forgiveness for those at lower incomes. But given what I've seen so far this will just be a bail-out in order to save the banks from bursting their bubble again (ie another shakedown).