This picture should actually read "House GOP Opposes Obama Proposal Allowing Students to borrow at .93%" but "Advances Bill That Charges Them Up to 10.5%" ...
... but you get the point.
At the end of the day, our GOP-led House of Representatives is perfectly content to allow our Too Big to Fail Banks (TBTF) to borrow money at .75 percent, while denying this option to our nation's college students. The primary reason the banks are borrowing at this rate - as I wrote about two months ago - is that our TBTF banks would go bust without access to cheap rates.
The problem here is that Congress doesn't want to extend the same financial subsidy to college students. This is ironic since they did nothing to collapse the economy, and have increasingly been forced to finance their college experience with more loans after the market meltdown of 2008.
The rationale behind the Republican proposal is simple. They want to use student loans as a way to help pay down the budget deficits that our TBTF banks made worse. And why not? Student loan debt is almost $1 trillion (almost as much as the $1.2 trillion our TBTF financial institutions borrowed on one day in 2008). So why not allow interest rates to go up on student loans, right? A few extra points of interest on almost a trillion dollars is serious money.
But we'll keep subsidizing the banks, and allow them to keep borrowing from the Federal Reserve at .75 percent.
This is yet another example of Congress having the wrong priorities, while demonstrating that they are seriously tone deaf to the challenges and problems that confront America.
- Mark
... but you get the point.
At the end of the day, our GOP-led House of Representatives is perfectly content to allow our Too Big to Fail Banks (TBTF) to borrow money at .75 percent, while denying this option to our nation's college students. The primary reason the banks are borrowing at this rate - as I wrote about two months ago - is that our TBTF banks would go bust without access to cheap rates.
The problem here is that Congress doesn't want to extend the same financial subsidy to college students. This is ironic since they did nothing to collapse the economy, and have increasingly been forced to finance their college experience with more loans after the market meltdown of 2008.
The rationale behind the Republican proposal is simple. They want to use student loans as a way to help pay down the budget deficits that our TBTF banks made worse. And why not? Student loan debt is almost $1 trillion (almost as much as the $1.2 trillion our TBTF financial institutions borrowed on one day in 2008). So why not allow interest rates to go up on student loans, right? A few extra points of interest on almost a trillion dollars is serious money.
But we'll keep subsidizing the banks, and allow them to keep borrowing from the Federal Reserve at .75 percent.
This is yet another example of Congress having the wrong priorities, while demonstrating that they are seriously tone deaf to the challenges and problems that confront America.
- Mark
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