President Obama took a break from his Martha’s Vineyard vacation to champion his progressive compatriot Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) student loan reform bill. During his weekly address, Obama said he would push Congress to consider Warren’s legislation, which would allow college graduates to refinance student loan debt.

“Over the weekend, the President was talking about student loans again,” Pat said on radio this morning. “I love it when he talks about student loans because, frankly, it's genius material. He really hits the nail on the head when he says things like this.”

While Obama avoided the trap of Hillary Clinton’s now infamous “dead broke” claim, the President did mention his own struggles with debt during the address:

OBAMA: But for too many families across the country, paying for higher education is a constant struggle. Earlier this year, a young woman named Elizabeth Cooper wrote to tell me how hard it is for middle-class families like hers to afford college. As she said, she feels “not significant enough to be addressed, not poor enough for people to worry [about], and not rich enough to be cared about.”

Michelle and I know the feeling – we only finished paying off our student loans ten years ago. And so as President, I’m working to make sure young people like Elizabeth can go to college without racking up mountains of debt.

As Pat and Stu joked, instead of using his clout to talk directly to the colleges and universities that are raising tuition costs at five times the rate of inflation, Obama blames Congress for not offering students “affordable” interest rates.

“I do like this about the President. He's going directly to the colleges and telling them, ‘Your tuition costs are out of the control.’ They need to stop rising at five times the rate of inflation, like they are,” Stu quipped. “[But] he's not doing that. He's not going the place that sets the pricing. He's going to the banks that set the pricing on the loans.”

Front page image courtesy of the AP