Freshman Class President [Romney Panders To (Futile) Youth Vote Too!]

Wall St. J ^ | April 27, 2012

[Steelfish]

April 26, 2012 Freshman Class President Obama rocks the youth vote by socking taxpayers.

This week President Obama toured college campuses in states critical to his re-election. And thanks to an aggressive interpretation of federal law, he managed to get taxpayers to pick up the tab. But it was the content of his message that will really cost Americans: a demand that Congress cut the rates on federal student loans for the next academic year. Congress seems willing to oblige, which means taxpayers appear headed for another painful lesson in government lending.

The obvious political play is to shore up support among the college-age voters who went overwhelmingly for Mr. Obama in 2008 but are understandably less enthusiastic in 2012. So Mr. Obama is trying to cheer up these kids by freezing the current 3.4% fixed rate on the government's subsidized Stafford loans for undergraduates.

The Pelosi Congress of 2007 knocked the rate down to 3.4%. But to make the program seem less financially reckless—and perhaps knowing it would be impossible for a future Congress to allow a rate spike in an election year—Democrats scheduled a doubling of the rate to 6.8% this July 1. Under fuzzy Congressional budget math, Mr. Obama's one-year rate freeze will cost $6 billion, which he intends to cover by raising taxes.

At a campaign stop, er, we mean while travelling on "official business" at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Mr. Obama scored Republicans for suggesting that he was simply trying to distract attention from the bad economy. "What economy are they talking about?" asked Mr. Obama.

Probably the one that, according to the Associated Press, has left more than 53% of bachelor's degree-holders under the age of 25 jobless or "underemployed." This means that, desperate for paychecks, recent grads have taken low-skill jobs...