Posted on 04/27/2012 2:33:07 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Republican leaders are ready to try pushing legislation through the House holding down interest rates on federal loans to millions of college students.
Democrats say that's a goal the GOP has adopted only lately, but the top House Democrat is opposing the measure anyway in a fight that highlights how election-year politics is coloring Congress' work.
The House planned to vote Friday on the bill, which would keep interest rates at 3.4 percent for subsidized Stafford loans, instead of rising as scheduled to 6.8 percent on July 1. The GOP-written package would cover its $5.9 billion cost by plucking money from a preventive health fund established in President Barack Obama's 2010 health care overhaul law a cut many Democrats are reluctant to make.
Friday's vote comes with congressional Republicans and Democrats, as well as Obama and his near-certain GOP opponent this fall, Mitt Romney, competing at every turn over who has the best prescription to wring jobs out of the still-struggling economy. The student loan battle fits nicely into that theme, with 7.4 million low- and middle-income students and their parents reliant on Stafford loans and a college education symbolizing the ticket to economic success.
(Excerpt) Read more at ajc.com ...
They are just trying to save what is left of our free market society.
It's the right thing to do...
Look for the Dems to push “no interest” student loans in hopes the GOP will THEN dissent and THEN can be accused of conducting a “ war on students.”
I think we are simply creating a continual year-after-year war on students. Figure 2025...Johnny Junior will graduate from some private college with a liberal arts degree and owe the government $150k. He’ll never get a job that pays well to settle the loan within twenty years. Eventually, Congress led by the Democrats will issue out some deal where after twenty years...no matter how much you owe....it’ll just be forgiven. We will all sit there in shock at vast sums of money owed to the government and just written off.
Coming in October:
“If reelected, I will forgive ALL student loans!”
if I was in boo coo debt for my Harvard degree who would I vote for?
Same as:
“If my opponent wins, he will destroy Social Security and throw granny out in the street!”
Who do the paranoid old farts vote for?
My proposed amendment to this legislation:
1. Change the bankruptcy laws to allow graduates with crushing debt to declare Chapter 7. Why should student loans be special and sacred above all other debt? OK, the stupid kids will screw up their credit records which is appropriate since they were such idiots to take on huge debts.
2. Have the Bankruptcy Trustee go after the UNIVERSITIES that received the loan proceeds and seek restitution of tuition, fees, and books purchased towards useless degrees. It is the schools that mislead the students into thinking that a $200,000 degree in art history will lead to a high paying job.
The ultimate scam artists who should suffer financially are the profs and administrators who con the students.
Wasn’t that the money they taxed cigarettes and Alcohol with the bogus lie that it was support to help pay for UN-insured children ? and if so ? where will the money come from when they tell us that those UN-insured children need to get insurance ? ... guess what people ? we been lied to and have been had... it was all a scam.
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