Sarah Ackroyd is a medical student at University of Rochester. She's studying to be an oncologist.
"As you can imagine the cost of education has been a lot for me, I've been in school for nearly ten years. And although I'm very grateful for the support that my parents and scholarship has provided for me, a lot of my education has been financed through federal loans."
One of those federal loan programs is the Perkins Loan. The program offers low interest rates, and deferment while in school, to help students that come from lower income households.
Slaughter says the costs of the Perkins Loan are offset by the interest students pay when they finish college. Furthermore, she says, you can't put a price on creating productive members of society.
"They go out and help to save the world, and pay taxes while they're at it. It more than reimburses the government for any expense they may have, which is minute to start with."
Slaughter says this is just one of several critical programs set to expire at the end of the month.
"Lest you think this is our only worry here, let me tell you that the FAA expires on September 30th, which will ground all airplanes, and we have no highway trust fund. So we have a lot of work to do, and I'm going down tomorrow to start mine. But this is critically important because this is the future of this country."
Congress has one month to pass a federal budget. If it doesn't, or doesn't agree on a temporary measure to keep the government funded, the alternative is a government shutdown.
