U.S. Sen. John Fetterman and U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean, both of Pennsylvania, are sponsoring legislation to defer student loans for students who withdraw from college due to a sexual assault or instance of harassment.

We believe it is worth considering — survivors of sexual assault deserve compassion and the difficulties in continuing an education in an environment that failed to protect them are no fault of their own.

“After going through horrific trauma like harassment, stalking or assault, survivors deserve the time to heal,” Dean said, according to a recent report.

We also must reiterate that this bill, like one U.S. Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson, also of Pennsylvania, proposed in April to target student debt relief to graduates pursuing careers in agriculture, are the right way to address this vexing issue.

Fetterman, Dean and Thompson are targeting their relief more selectively.The more focused approach will curtail the costs incurred — unlike the White House’s unacceptably expensive approach.

Unlike the efforts to offer broad student debt relief through executive actions, both Fetterman’s proposal and Thompson’s proposal are properly conducted through our federal legislature, where, as we editorialized in late April, “n issue as important and as potentially costly as student debt relief” can be subject to the “measures of transparency, debate and compromise” that the American public deserves.

We believe the proposals could benefit from more compromise, such as clearly cutting federal spending elsewhere to account for the costs.

But that is precisely the strength of the legislative process — the potential for improvement.