Is student-loan debt stifling entrepreneurs...

or is this just a Clinton campaign gimmick?   Many commentators believe the latter.

Clinton's plan would permit deferral of repayment, and eventually forgiveness of up to $17,500.  This is not a new idea.  Like tax deferrals and tax exemptions, student-loan deferrals have been a tool of public policy in Washington for decades.

When I went to college in the late sixties, my financial aid package included federal loans.  I left Franklin & Marshall College owing $3,000... probably the equivalent of $30,000 (or the national average) today.  Initially, I went into the US Coast Guard.  My loan repayment was on hold with no interest during that four-year period.

Then, when I went to work in the PR department at Case Western Reserve, I also began taking courses toward my Ph.D.  Since I took two courses a semester, I could continue to defer repayment of these loans.  After nearly five years in the communication shop at CWRU, I became a full-time law student there.  Not only were my loans kept on hold.  I also borrowed more for law school.

Eventually, after law school... and a dozen years after my college graduation... I began a 13-year repayment cycle, which eventually saw all my government loans repaid in the early 1990s.

The loans I received in college were called National Defense Loans, an artifact of the Cold War.  And, perhaps oddly, though those serving in the military, such as myself, got our repayments deferred, contemporaries who went into K-12 teaching (if my memory serves me) got a percentage forgiven for every year they stuck with it.

Tax breaks on mortgage interest payments are intended to encourage home ownership.  They work.  Student-loan deferrals and forgiveness also have worked in the past.  Mrs. Clinton faces two questions she needs to answer, if her proposal is to rise above the "gimmick" label:

1.  Is encouragement of entrepreneurship a public-policy priority of the federal government?

2.  And, if so, will student-loan deferrals and forgiveness achieve this policy goal?

Until she answers her critics on these two points, her plan remains a campaign stunt.