Every Senate Republican except Dan Coats of Indiana (who didn’t cast a vote) just voted to sustain a filibuster against Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island’s bill to extend low interest rates on college loans. Independent Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with the Democrats, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia joined the Republicans. Needing 60 votes to end debate and have a vote on the actual bill, the Senate only came up with fifty-one votes. If Congress can’t agree to do something, college loan interest rates will double on July 1st.
Republicans know that they are doing catastrophically badly with voters under thirty, and this is how they deal with it. I guess I am glad that they are so terrible at politics.
Meanwhile, the House is doing their own outreach:
Pissing off young voters and Hispanic voters…looks like the GOP doesn’t care about winning national elections. Why should they? If they control the House (and keep it through gerrymandering) then they control the budget. If they can filibuster, then they control the Senate.
This is not the same country that I live in, is it?
Turn it around — if Frago had delivered the requested service prior to being paid and Gilbert reneged on paying her, would she have been justified in shooting him for theft?
Or what if the agreement had been for $150 worth drugs and the dealer took the money without handing over the drugs. Okay to kill the dealer?
According to the law, I’d hope so.
No. It’s Texas.
.
A more elaborate account of the Texas hooker case. Did the jury make clear which property theft was at stake here, the girl or the 150 bucks?
How are Republicans terrible at politics? Their goal is to screw everyone except their wealthy benefactors and their imaginary sky friends, and even with minority status, their obstructionism, as on this issue, looks to be remarkably successful.
Even if you buy the idea that this is a good thing because it helps Democrats, that comes nowhere near the bad that results from financially crippling an entire generation of college students. And getting so many people deeply in debt – a debt which will now be far harder to pay off – at the very beginning of people’s work careers has all sorts of far-reaching consequences, most of them beneficial for employers and the wealthy, and terrible for society. Same for the vast number of people for whom the prohibitive cost makes college impossible at all.
How much college costs, who can go, and how it’s paid for all have completely changed over the past 20 years in this country with almost no public debate, and very little awareness by people over about age 40. It’s another large, discrete step on our road toward becoming a feudal society populated by two classes: the unspeakably wealthy and the illiterate, terrorized Help.
More of George Bush’s legacy, along with the bankruptcy bill. For history that people might not know: interest rates depended on the T-bill throughout the Clinton presidency. Prior to Clinton (bush 1, really, as the change happened in 1992) rates were fixed but changed year by year. Then Bush 2 was like “hahaha fuck you young people. Eat fixed 6.8% interest rates. Oh, and if that wasn’t enough, eat forever being in debt. With y bankruptcy bill, you can never ever discharge student loans. How do you like that?”
Then Obama lowered them to 3.4% (rates I never got because I was sandwiched between Bush’s rates and Obama’s).
Now overall 6.8% fixed is better than the children of the 80’s and 90’s, but rates are absurdly low right now that if they were fixed to the t-bill still they’d be below 2%.
We should switch to Australia’s model.
Oh, and if that wasn’t enough, eat forever being in debt. With y bankruptcy bill, you can never ever discharge student loans. How do you like that?”
And who voted for that turd of a bankruptcy bill? Why does Joe Biden hate people who go to college?
Dunno. But the bill passed by veto proof majorities. Unlike the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which required Dick Cheney’s vote.
Doesn’t make it better, or Biden look smarter. Are any of the Democrats who voted for that turd of a bill still in office? Also, just another reason why I wouldn’t vote for Biden in a primary.
Yeah I agree. And looks like Carper, Landrieu, Nelson, Pryor, Reid, Stabenow. So lots left.
And Clinton was NV.
I thought that student loan debt was already excluded from Chapter 7 bankruptcy laws prior to the 2005 bill.
Government loans weren’t. Loans from nongovernmental or for profit entities were still dischargable. Now none are dischargable.
While it’s true that at current floating rates, this would equate to a lower level, you basically would need rates to stay that low in order to fully benefit.
The only reasonably responsible way to make student loan payments floating-rate would be to cap the maximum interest rate at a level at a low rate. It looks like the GOP bill allows it to go as high as 8.5%, which is simply too high. Of the 2 lesser evils, I’d take the 3.4% fixed.
Also (if you want to look at it from a markets-based perspective), the prime rate right now (which is for the most credit-worthy individuals) is 3.25%…so you’re basically giving everyone (who, on average, has a lower credit score than that) effectively Prime+15, which is pretty damn good in and of itself. The prime rate ain’t going any lower, either…it’s been 3.25% for a very long time, even though effective overnight rates are at zero.
Right, but Obama’s plan isn’t to make it 3.4% fixed, which would be a good deal and I’d take it in a second.
The GOP wants to go back to 1992-2005, but using a 10-year treasury instead of the 91-day T-bill with the cap at 8.25%. Obama’s plan is barely better than the GOP’s. Obama’s doesn’t even offer a cap! 6.8% fixed is better than both of their plans, quite frankly.
I’d like free-education for all, but that limits university spots. And seeing as the US is so obsessed with this shit, it’s going to be too hard to take loans out of the equation. If they must be there, we should replicate Australia, which issues interest free loans (though they do collect “fees” to keep up with inflation), and you pay them back through your taxes; higher incomes pay more than lower.
Also, my private loans are lower interest than my federal loans. My Wells Fargo is at 3.75%, my Great Lakes average at around 4%. I paid off all of my 6.8% in my first year of repayment. The remaining federal average at 5.1%.
I treat these things like my hair’s on fire. I could have made more money investing and paying slightly more than the minimum, but disaster can strike at any moment and they’re not dischargable. Not worth fucking around. They’ll be paid off next February, totaling $61k (which includes interest collected over the years); took me two years. But I have no savings. Still, I’m thankful, and one of the lucky ones.
WTF are King and Manchin’s problems?
King is an independent with a market fixation, not a Democrat. He’s so DLC, he won’t even join the Democratic party.
I doubt he’d vote to re-authorize direct college lending by the DoE.
I plan to ask him directly when I see him.
Please do. He ought to know better.
He’ll try to blow some smoke up your ass about how the answer to whatever it is harnessing the synergy of public-private yadda-yadda to the incubation of dynamic alternatives to the bad old ways of doing it.
Whatever it is.
It’s been his MO since he was running for governor. The moustache is not the only thing he shares with Friedman.
Maine has a higher smoke to ass ratio than almost any other state.
We prefer our colons smoggy and our government stupid.
That answer to that is flat no. Education is a public good and should be free.
Given that the majority of young people still do not graduate from college, perhaps the GOP is pushing yet another of their divisive “jealousy” gambits. In this case, screwing college students so that non-college youth will feel good that those “elitists” don’t get their low-cost loans.
I don’t think it will work as well as they’d like. Dems fighting for things like subsidized childcare and minimum wage increases will help keep all the under 30’s in the fold.
Crab-bucket politics are the way forward for the GOP. It gets them out of the geriatric box they’ve painted themselves into.