One of the greatest hardships facing America’s college students is student debt; the average student in the class of 2008 graduated with $23,000 of debt, “a figure 25 percent higher than what their older brothers and sisters owed when they graduated from college in 2004.”

To tackle this student debt crisis, last year the House of Representatives passed the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA), which expands and improves successful student aid programs like the Pell Grant and the Perkins Loan program, and eliminates billions of dollars in subsidies to wasteful private lenders by arranging loans directly with students instead of through bank middlemen.

The Senate is currently deliberating over its own version of the bill, and it is one Senate floor vote away from being signed into law by the President. However, the student lending industry has launched an “aggressive lobbying campaign” of senators representing states where big lenders are based, scaremongering about job losses resulting from passing SAFRA. Now, it appears that their lobbying is paying off, as six Democratic senators have written to Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, asking him to “consider potential alternative legislative proposals” to SAFRA’s major lending reforms:

Six Democrats signaled deep concerns with their chamber’s student lending reform bill on Tuesday, imploring party leaders to “consider potential alternative legislative proposals” in the coming days.

That could spell trouble for Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and other Democratic leaders, who once hoped to advance the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act to the president’s desk using the chamber’s 50-vote reconciliation process.

In a brief letter dated Tuesday, Democratic Sens. Bill Nelson (Fl.), Tom Carper (Del.), Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), Jim Webb (Va.), Mark Warner (Va.) and Ben Nelson (Neb.) describe reform to the country’s “higher education funding” system as a “priority.” But the group…also express concerns the Senate’s lending bill could ultimately result in local job loss.

While the senators may be claiming that passing SAFRA would result in job losses in their states, the truth is that it would be minimal at worst. The fact is that only 30,000 people at most are employed in the student lending industry. And because the companies would still be in charge of servicing all the government issued loans, servicing jobs could actually increase. For example, “Nelnet (Ben Nelson’s biggest donor) saw their servicing revenues [increase] 13% in 2009 as a result of a contract they won to service student loans for the Department of Education.”

One way to avoid a filibuster by Republicans and lender-friendly Democrats is to pass SAFRA with the health care legislation in one reconciliation bill. The Hill reports that “a Democratic official familiar with negotiations” over the student lending bill has told them that the leadership has already decided to “pair [the] overhaul of student lending with healthcare reform,” although Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) office says “no final decision has been made.” Using reconciliation for a major education reform bill would hardly be without precedent. In 2007, the Senate passed the College Cost Reduction Act of 2007 through the reconciliation process by an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote of 79-12.

Repeating conservative lies about reconciliation, Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell today that reconciliation for health care reform “procedurally cannot be done.” Claiming it was never used for major legislation without “overwhelming bipartisan support,” Bond predicted the Senate will ultimately not be able to pass the health care bill through the reconciliation process:

BOND: Well, first of all the president shouldn’t get his allies to cram through on reconciliation, something to which the American people overwhelmingly object. They object to reconciliation. It was never meant to pass major substantive changes, whether they are trying to make a bad bill slightly less worse. No matter how much you put on the outhouse, it would still smell bad.

MITCHELL: Well, that may be a great Missouri expression but that same outhouse was used for the bush tax cuts and for other major legislation in republican years. why shouldn’t the democrats do exactly what the republicans have been doing?

BOND: Major legislation was passed on reconciliation. Everything from the civil rights to social security passed, overwhelming bipartisan support. Reconciliation was meant to deal only with revenue issues, like — dealing with taxes and spending. Not making substantive changes, which the Speaker is trying to convince the house democrats will be made. They will not be made because procedurally it cannot be done.

Watch it:

Bond’s argument is wrong on several counts. Congressional Democrats do not plan to use reconciliation to make “major substantive changes,” but rather to modify revenue issues, like taxes and spending, while keeping most of the bill that already passed the Senate intact.

Regardless, Bond voted for “substantive” bills using the reconciliation process when he was part of the Republican-controlled Senate under President Bush. They used reconciliation to pass “major” domestic policy legislation, including the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, and important changes to health care policy. In 2005, Bond railed against the filibuster — the use of which has forced Democrats to consider using reconciliation — calling it a “product” of recent Senate rules that “does not derive from the authority of the Constitution.”

Regarding his claim of bipartisan support for reconciliation bills in the past, the Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky has documented how the Senate under Bush passed three reconciliation bills with three or fewer Democratic votes. The 2003 Bush tax cuts were supported by only two Democrats and needed Vice President Cheney’s tie-breaking vote.

And the American people do not “overwhelmingly object” to using reconciliation for health care. A recent Progressive Change Campaign Committee poll of key states found majorities would not “object to the Senate’s use of ‘reconciliation’ rules to pass that bill with a majority vote.” Even 58 percent of people from Bond’s state of Missouri said they would not object.