This one is complicated. The Senate just overwhelmingly passed a fix for the student loan problem (the interest rate doubled on July 1st), with only 17 liberals and nutjob Mike Lee of Utah voting against. The White House was pleased and blasted out the following release to the press.
Statement by the President on Student Loans
A better bargain for the middle class means making a college education available to every single American willing to work for it. That’s why I applaud the wide bipartisan majority of Senators who passed a bill to cut rates on nearly all new federal student loans, rolling back a July 1st rate hike and saving undergraduates an average of more than $1,500 on loans they take out this year.
This compromise is a major victory for our nation’s students. It meets the key principles I laid out from the start: it locks in low rates next year, and it doesn’t overcharge students to pay down the deficit. I urge the House to pass this bill so that I can sign it into law right away, and I hope both parties build on this progress by taking even more steps to bring down soaring costs and keep a good education – a cornerstone of what it means to be middle class – within reach for working families.
Is the administration totally full of shit? That’s what Howie Klein thinks. Elizabeth Warren has been railing against this bill all week long.
As best as I understand it, the White House’s statement is true but incomplete. That’s because the law will reduce rates today and pay for it by raising rates later. So, it’s a good deal for people in college today, but bad news for people in middle school.
So, was it a bill worthy of support?
That depends. If your goal was to fix the sudden doubling of interest rates on today’s college students, why not promise the Republicans something they want in exchange for their cooperation? After all, you may be able to change it later, and it’s the only way that they’ll play ball.
But it’s a gamble, because you may not be able to change it later.
These are the Democrats who refused to vote for Obama’s key principle: Baldwin, Blumenthal, Boxer, Brown, Cardin, Gillibrand, Hirono, Leahy, Markey, Menendez, Murphy, Reed, Sanders, Stabenow, Udall, Warren, Whitehouse.
Here are a few Republicans who Obama applauds in this major victory: Chambliss, Cornyn, Crapo, Cruz.
Here’s a different, and far less high-minded question: was the bill worthy of support if your goal has anything to do with the upcoming midterm elections?
Elizabeth Warren is a purest on this issue, which I deeply appreciate, but this compromise is the best these fools will do for now. Obama is all about the possible.
Students are a big part of the Obama coalition that Democrats need to turn out in 2014. Even if it’s not perfect it helps college voters now, which hopefully will help them get to the polls next November.
“Bipartisan” and “middle-class” are two words repeated endlessly by this administration that make me cringe. The true middle-class may not have it as easy or be as well heeled as they were a few years ago, but it’s the working classes that are getting hammered. The folks that are ten of thousands of dollars short for their children to go to college. That haven’t the money to keep their children on their health insurance plans until their 26 years old. Their children have been eking out a living at some crappy job since they were teens.
The problem with higher education, as well health care, is that it costs too damn much. Slightly reduced interest rates on student loans, or slight reduced health insurance premiums, just kicks the can down the road.
And, yet, rich and poor alike, almost everyone thinks they are middle class. Or pretend to, anyway.
True. Along with “American exceptionalism” and “greatest military in the world,” “we are a middle-class nation” is one of the three biggest cons on this country.
Highly recommend Moyers “Two American Families.” They aren’t middle-class and never were.
Hmm, how is greatest military in the world a con?
I mean certainly asymmetric warfare gives us fits, but it’s done that to every occupying power since ever.
We do spend a lot to lose wars don’t we?
We fight a lot of wars too.
Amash Amendment Roll Call.
Bachmann, Boehner, and Pelosi all on the same page with Obama and Gen Alexander. Bipartisan evil.
Entire South Carolina delegation, including Jim Clyburn votes Aye.
In North Carolina, Mel Watt votes Aye with Patrick McHenry and Walter Jones.
G. K. Butterfield, David Price, and Mike McIntyre vote No with Virginia Foxx and Renee Elmers.
Smell a Boehner-Pelosi kabuki move. Just enough Dems to defeat.
Boehner controls his caucus?
Those ayes were legitimate votes; agreement between the left and right if not for exactly the same reasons. Former Madame Speaker probably twisted a few arms to increase the DEM noes. Sad to see Jackson-Lee and Kaptur on that list.
Boehner only has to control part of his caucus. A lot, but not all, of the Tea Party types voted Aye. Rogers was vicious and Bachmann was predictably loopy word salad. “No” votes were justified by fear. “Yes” votes said the NSA had gone too far.
I found the SC delegation unity very strange. As well as the way that NC split. Jones I expected. But McHenry voting Aye was what? Stiffing Boehner?
But, but, but, we (purportedly) want an “informed, open and deliberative process” for having a “discussion” on our New Surveillance State! However, proposing laws in Congress is inappropriate! Not “deliberative”! Nor is restricting NSA funding to the actual terms of the statute authorizing the practice!
How exactly is the “discussion” to commence? And how “open” is the FISA court (and its opinions) again?
You mean you’re not satisfied with the “sweet nothings” of Obama speeches? Get with the program — when Obama speaks you’re supposed to swoon and when you awake, scream traitor, traitor, traitor about Manning, Snowden, and Greenwald, and Assange is a rapist.
You are really condescending in this comment. I think that there is a lot of room for consensus even though you choose to set up the conflict in such an absurd way. Swooning over the President and screaming traitor vs. what? Much of the discussion I have seen is much more complex than your characterization.
So what do you propose? How do you plan to move public opinion on the issue of security and privacy?
I’d probably vote for it, but I wouldn’t be trotting it out as some big victory. I would be stumping every second I could to be like “this bill was bad, and it’s the Reoublicans’ fault it’s not better.”
Also keep in mind this isn’t like the public option fight where the president supported it and there wasn’t enough votes. No, the outcome that came out f the Senate was the president’s preferred policy. So if you come back to it, you’ll need to do it without Obama as president.
Actually that is not true-heard it from a Senator. The President preferred the extension that failed back in June. Apparently my Senator felt that the extension was just “kicking the can down the road” and not solving the problem. I told him that this solution was a real blow to my family and he was very surprised.
Not what I’ve read. He may have preferred that to getting this another day, but Obama never put it on the table as his actual policy preference. When bills were being debated, this was always Obama’s preference. In fact, Obama’s proposal didn’t even have a cap on the loans. Look at his budget. Extending current policy wasn’t in there, something to the right of what passed was there, though.
Because Obama saying he prefers something is a surefire way to make sure it gets passed.
I don’t know what you read, just saying what I was told by one of the people involved. You can go back to the reporting in the middle of June to see many articles about Reid only willing to have a vote on extension of student loan rates and not willing to link them with interest rates–and then Manchin and King defected.
See this from April. The only real difference between Obama’s and the GOP’s is that Obama wanted to have rates fixed for the life of the loan, whereas Republicans would readjust them each year. Apologies for mobile version, I’m in my phone:
“Although Obama’s budget proposal may bring immediate interest rate relief to students taking out new loans this year, advocates and student debt experts argued that it would only be a short-term fix, because there is no cap on the interest rates students could face later. If the government’s borrowing costs increase in upcoming years as the economy improves, as expected, student loan interest rates may rise above current levels.”
m.huffpost.com/us/entry/3054677
I view it as problematic, mainly because this means college students are going to inherently have to pay a lot more attention to economics and Fed policy when deciding to take out a student loan. You shouldn’t be making college students dependent on wherever the 10-year note is trading on some random auction each June.
Stupid move. If the government was a financial institution, it would make a lot of sense. But it’s not.
I feel like it had a bit of a “live to fight another day” aspect to it.
Roger that.
Glad I started saving years ago.
Like the sequester?
Exactly. This congress won’t have to deal with it, and the congress that does will say “hey, wasn’t us, don’t blame us” and do nothing.
The question isn’t is it better to help some now and screw some people over later, it’s whether to stop screwing people over now and REALLY screw some people over HARD later.
Of course, this is just another step in the attempt to restrict college to the wealthy and create a permanent underclass (since thanks to robots, there won’t be jobs they can do).
Say what you will about Snowden but he gave Obama an opening to roll back the surveillance state. He failed. This was a missed opportunity. I wonder if we’ll even get a figleaf bill through Congress.
I thought I read somewhere that this congress had only passed 13 bills so this is a frigging miracle in some ways. I definitely don’t call this a fiasco. I say forget perfection. I live in a red state and can’t survive emotionally if I see everything as gloom and doom or we become the ones that are sad because we didn’t get our pony. There are too many people that went through hell to get basic rights in this country and they didn’t stop at every setback or resistance from those in power. Change is the nature of life. Conditions WILL change. Our choice is the vision we have for the future and what we are going to do right now to create the world we want to live in.
I’m going to see this as a victory and keep going forward. I live in Indiana and am thrilled with my blue dog Senator Joe Donnelly instead of GOP A-baby-from-rape-is-God’s-will Mourdoch. Joe is for marriage equality and all kinds of Democratic ideals.
We need to celebrate every step forward and LET OTHERS know about it. Students now are being helped.
We have to start being realistic and focus on registering Dems, getting them IDs and getting them to the polls in 2014. The way forward is to vote the GOP out.
Love this comment!!!!
I wanted better. But today’s kids need help right now, and better from this Senate would have taken an act of god. And I don’t believe in god.
That’s always the dynamic, isn’t it? The left wants better, the right wants worse. The right is willing to suffer to achieve long-term goals, the left–because we don’t want innocent citizens to suffer–is not. So we fold on the long-term goals and call it a short-term victory.
We stopped the debt ceiling hostage-taking! Yay, sequester!
As usual the best that can be said is that it’s a very crappy bill, one that saves the asses of students today, with the hope that the absurd increases for students tomorrow can be somehow repealed or altered. If you are a student taking out a loan today, you’ve got a better deal than 6.8%, which would have been obscene given today’s market rates. “Major Victory for our nation’s students!”, not so much. It’s hardly even a “compromise”.
Since it is in essence a bill that celebrates abusive “conservative” Free Market policies, even Boner’s House of Imbeciles should pass it. But they are a true collection of nihilist lunatics, who likely disagree with the entire concept of federal student loans, so we’ll see.
The entire student loan morass is such an Augean stable that it could never be cleaned out and made sane and humane. We are shoveling an ocean of student loan money into phony for-profit plutocrat-owned “colleges” and online degree mills for “degrees” with no real employment prospects. As higher education becomes essential even to fail in today’s doomed “economy”, and as it becomes expensive beyond anything Dickens or Twain could ever satirize, one has to wonder exactly why the federal gub’mint has to profit (via interest payments) to the tune of tens of billions annually from extending student loans.
Would it kill the federal gub’mint to loan funds to students at rates less than it may be paying itself? Would it kill Repubs (and Bank-lovin’ Dems) not to extract net revenues from non-wealthy college students? Do 20 year old college students really need to be the hedge against the risk of future rate increases in the treasury market? Apparently, yes.
Anyway, we had this big debate on interest rates on student loans in the senate. Kind of a big topic for many families. I have to wonder from reading press releases and WH and senator statements and news reports if anyone following the story could understand in the slightest what the hell happened, what the new reality is and what “side” anyone was on. As for the history of student loans, and the policy for extracting interest from young Americans who have no real choice but obtain higher education, let alone the wisdom of floating market rates, forget it, that is never discussed, so the electorate could never be “informed” on the issue. Another A+ for our useless corporate media, enabled by jabbering spin from politicos….
First of all, the rates were scheduled to go up immediately. There was no “do nothing” scenario, unless you are okay with the high loan rates.
Second of all, the Republicans control the House. Rates go up next year, to unacceptable levels, unless you get the House Republicans to vote for a bill.
So what they did was set up something like the annual Medicare Doc Fix. Rates are always scheduled to reset to something unacceptable, and Congress acts every year to fix them, but not permanently.
But it’s a gamble, because you may not be able to change it later.
Anything can happen, but consider: student loan rates going up to 6.8% was so politically toxic that the House Republicans felt the need to be seen addressing the problem.
The potential of a reset to even higher rates (assuming the Fed rate is someday high enough to kick the loan rates up to 7+%) would be even more toxic.