Last night, Jon Stewart chatted about student loan reform with Austan Goolsbee, an economist and member of the Council of Economic Advisers. The college affordability action starts at 4:38, check it out:

Don’t let the special interests kill reform, take action now!

Here is the transcript:

Stewart: Can I tell you what surprised me about some of the savings you’re going to have in there? The idea of taking away the middle man in college loans would get us 46 billion dollars over 10 years- that, stunned me. That gets us more savings than removing subsidies from oil companies which I guess over 10 years is like 40 billion.

Goolsbee: And the thing that’s so frustrating about that if you take that example- so the President says “look, let’s end that subsidy which the data shows is more expensive.” Doing it directly, just having the government do it instead of giving a subsidy to the bank to make the loan, it’s more efficient to do it that way and you can take away the subsidy and use the money to invest in pell grants, raise pell grants, invest in education, which for the long run we know is critical”

Applause

Goolsbee: “But, as you might imagine the special interests are down there trying to kill that…”