This page was last updated on May 8, 2012.
End Student Debt!; The Editors – The Nation; Progressive Democrats of America – PA 12th CD Chapter; May 3, 2012.
Randy Shannon posted this under the title “Bailout Student Loan Debt – Tax Wall Street.”
You can learn more about BCR’s leftster management here.
The piece leads off, “The student loan crisis finally reached center stage in Washington after the House GOP budget called for letting interest rates double on government-subsidized loans (and for deep cuts in Pell grants and other student support). If it passes, students who borrow the maximum will end up paying as much as $1,000 a year in added interest. President Obama sensibly called for extending the lower rate, stumping at colleges and on talk-shows to enlist students and others in the cause.”
BCR management and the authors failed to note Democrats intentionally manufactured “[t]he student loan crisis” in 2007 for political gain. Let’s take a look at what this piece omitted.
· In 2007, congressional Democrats passed the College Cost Reduction Act of 2007 (H.R. 2669). That bill gradually cut the interest rate in half, from 6.8% to 3.4%, over the period from 7/1/2006 – 6/30/2012.
· In both houses of Congress, 100% of Democrats who voted on H.R. 2669 voted for the bill while a minority of Republicans voted in favor. This allowed the bill to pass with veto-proof majorities in both houses. Then-President Bush should have forced a veto-override vote, but he did not and signed the bill.
· Cutting the student-loan interest rate was so important to then-U.S. Senator Barack Obama he did not cast a vote for or against H.R. 2669 on two occasions. On 7/19/07, Mr. Obama’s last vote on H.R. 2669 was at 1:47 pm. Mr. Obama then missed votes 257 through 270, with roll-call vote 270 being the first time H.R. 2669 passed the Senate. Where was Mr. Obama? Campaigning in New Hampshire. What consumed Mr. Obama’s time on the day (9/7/07) of the Senate’s final vote? Mr. Obama was busy campaigning in California and Oregon.
· H.R. 2669 stipulates the interest rate returns to the pre-H.R. 2669 level on July 1, 2012. Yes, you read that right.
With a veto-proof majority, why did Democrats write the bill so the interest-rate reduction would expire? How would an expiration date benefit the students Democrats claimed they wanted to help? Further, why have the interest-rate reduction expire on July 1st of a presidential election year? The election year had to be 2012 because 2008 was too soon after the bill’s passage (9/27/07). The sole purpose of H.R. 2669 was to manufacture an election-year “crisis” for Democrats to exploit.
Lobbying for “a financial-transactions tax … on Wall Street” is nothing new for BCR management. A few previous efforts are here, here, and here.
The article notes something I pointed out in a previous critique: “Since 1982 the cost of living has doubled and … college tuition and fees have exploded more than four times.” The article neither mentions why tuition is increasing so rapidly nor that it needs to be brought under control. The article’s apparent “solution” for out-of-control tuition is 100% subsidization, aka “[m]aking public college (or advanced training) free!” Lefties would like the gullible among us to believe post-secondary education can be “free” by increasing tax rates on “the rich.” There ain’t no free lunch, however. As satirist P.J. O’Rourke once said about healthcare, “If you think higher education is expensive now, wait till you see what it costs when it’s free.”
In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity. <g>
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