Republicans say they killed the bill that would lower interest on existing student loans because it does nothing to cure cancer … er, it does nothing to lower college costs and therefore reduce borrowing. Or cure cancer.
Republicans said the bill wouldn’t have done anything to lower education costs or reduce borrowing, and they accused Democrats of playing politics by highlighting an issue that was bound to fail.
— Senate Republicans block student loan bill, Erica Werner, Associated Press, today
The bill, written and sponsored by Elizabeth Warren, would allowed borrowers, including those with “years-old debt and interest rates topping 7 percent or more, refinance at today’s lower rates,” the AP article specifies, and “would have been paid for with the so-called Buffett Rule, which sets minimum tax rates for people making over $1 million.” The vote was 56-38.
Should the Republicans actually be interested in doing something to lower higher-education costs and consequently reduce borrowing, they might consider reinstating substantial federal financial assistance to states in order to help the states once again fund their state universities and colleges at, say, the pre-Bush-tax-cuts-era levels, so that these universities and colleges weren’t being funded mostly by tuition.
And should Republicans actually acknowledge that current high levels of student debt–debt already incurred, which was the subject of that bill–won’t recede even if college and university attendance suddenly were made free of charge, and concede that the high level of current debt is itself a problem, they will stop claiming that you shouldn’t try to help students and former students who are deeply in debt unless you also fix an unrelated problem, or even also fix a problem that is related but not in a way that matters to the proposed fix.
So the current Republican excuse for refusing to tackle any actual problem is that any fix wouldn’t affect every problem we have. The problem for the Republicans that this tactic won’t fix is that the many millions of people directly affected by the particular problem recognize the Republicans’ non sequitur for what it is. And so do most other people.
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This is another in my series of posts on the Republicans’ steady diet of cliches and nonsensical slogans as their campaign modus operandi.
In Ha-Joon Chang’s “23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism” he explains that so many more people going to college isn’t really that big a plus for economic output — that they have to go only because everybody else goes; meaning without it they wont be competitive — on a relative basis.
He gives the example of Switzerland having had only 15% college educated up to 1990 — with about the highest worker productivity in the world — up to 40% by now; same reason.
What occurs to me is that if a college education is not that much of an INHERENT plus economically — then — the gigantically jumping costs of recent years are not justified even the slightest little bit. If everybody understood that — or had understood that all along — then, whatever has was added to college costs that has ballooned them so high and put everybody into such a deep pit (now there’s the mixed metaphor of the week) APPARENTLY FOR NO REASON could have been cut to the bone without hesitation.
Given that this generation’s unnecessarily (super) deep college debt was just that, UNNECESSARY — maybe that gives us an opening to give them extraordinary one-time relief (one-time assuming we can reverse the crazy high cost trend) — perhaps putting all such debt under the Income Based Repayment program (and not charging tax on unpaid at the end — should be easier in a presumably more sane 25 years from now).
Today’s politicians are ideologically honest. As Howard Hughes once said, ” There’s nothing lower than a politician who won’t stay bought.”
There was an article yesterday in Slate about longtime moderate Wisconsin Republican Rep. Tom Petri’s proposal–current, but dating back to 1983–that would base monthly student loan repayments on a percentage (10%) of current income. The author of the article, Jonathan Weissmann attacks the Dems for pushing Warren’s bill when they know it can’t pass now, rather than pushing Petri’s bill, which is co-sponsored by a couple of Dems. But the two proposals aren’t mutually exclusive; Warren’s would reduce the overall amount owed, by reducing the interest owed. The article’s at http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/06/elizabeth_warren_student_debt_crisis_it_s_actually_tom_petri_who_has_the.html.
But here’s the thing about what you say about Switzerland, Denis. The elementary and secondary schools in Switzerland, and in fact in most of Europe but especially in northern and central Europe, are, overall, infinitely better than the elementary and secondary schools in vast, vast swaths of this country. People who get a high school diploma in northern or central Europe, or for that matter in much of eastern Europe, actually are fairly well educated. Not so for people who graduate from high school in, probably, about two-thirds of places in this country.
Bev:
Understand the non-profit status of colleges.
You have to understand the GOP’s agenda:
their goal is to enrich the wealthy and grow their power, everything else they do is with that in mind, everything, from racial dog whistling to social issues, to tax cuts and cutting social programs (a lot of the social and race stuff is to create wedge issues to get middle and working class whites to go along with the economic agenda).
Of course they will block anything that threatens to take away from the wealthy, and things like higher taxes, as well as making it easier to get an education threatens the concentration of wealth and the political power of the wealthy.
Check out:
Colleges are full of it: Behind the three-decade scheme to raise tuition, bankrupt generations, and hypnotize the media — by — Thomas Frank (of “What’s the Matter With Kansas” fame).
http://www.salon.com/2014/06/08/colleges_are_full_of_it_behind_the_three_decade_scheme_to_raise_tuition_bankrupt_generations_and_hypnotize_the_media/?src=longreads
I wish I could cut and paste (w/o permission) this chart in the beginning of his piece:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-15/cost-of-college-degree-in-u-s-soars-12-fold-chart-of-the-day.html
Beverley,
I wish I still had Chang’s book to quote (returned) but he listed the same growth of college participation in many modern countries and — heavy progressive economist that he is — he asserts it all added little productivity. After I read Frank’s piece I realized that the US price jumping (as aside from participation) add little educational value as well.
America really needs a European social democracy change of culture. Americans have to learn to take care of themselves. I grew up in an American economic (social — all same) democracy accidentally formed by the Great Depression and WWII — as in leveling labor market legislation and leveling confiscatory taxes. A much better country (if you were white). This time around we will have to make it happen on purpose — fate is not going to intervene.
At my alma mater, Michigan State, cost for an out-of-state student is about 625% of what I paid in 1964 (based on actual total cost from then and the MSU website estimator for tuition plus room-and-board and my estimate of books and incidentals–the latter cost estimate was made a year or two ago by me for a previous discussion). So I’m guessing that the 1200% figure in Bloomberg is an average of a distribution which includes a fat upper tail. (I would like to see the median figure.) Going to a community college for two years and then transferring to a good state university might work for some people.
Which is not to say that we don’t have a big problem. We do, and the Warren bill should have passed.