Congress Fails Again: Student Loan Rates To Double

In what is becoming an all too familiar story, members of the Senate were unable to reach an agreement to keep student loan interest rates for Stafford Loans from doubling. This time it is the Democrats who are fighting with President Obama. From Fox News:

Democrats have sought to keep interest on Stafford loans low, saying poor and middle class students need the help to get college educations. Republicans, seeking to cut, or at least control spending, have proposed linking student loans to the financial markets instead of letting Congress set federal lending rates. President Obama included a variation of that market-based approach in the budget he sent to Congress earlier this year, leaving his fellow Democrats trying to block his efforts.

Linking student loans to financial markets would complete the strangle hold that corporations have on the American population, and actually most of the world, allowing them to manipulate student loan rates in the same way that little things like food and gas are manipulated, by creating markets that continually rise even as the middle and lower classes make little or no financial gains. Recently the stock market set a record high by reaching 15,000 on the Dow Jones industrial average. Are things getting better for the average citizen?

This is the same climate we found as housing prices soured just before the bubble burst. This is the same illogical gains that proceeded the financial meltdown which has left the middle and lower classes hurting more then any other time since the Great Depression.

By pushing for student loan rates that are linked to market forces, President Obama is revealing the dirty little secret of the Democratic party, especially Democrat presidents, that their fiscal policies are often in line with conservative Republican ideologies. Democrats rely on Wall Street “donations” for campaign finance. Do not be fooled.

Let’s make this simple and clear: The federal government is angling to hand over the future of America’s children, of the lower and middle classes chances at obtaining education, to corporate interests who will no doubt betray the great charge they are given the instant that a profit can be made. If the government is no longer on the side of the people, if the people can no longer count on the government to be the counter balance to the great economic empires that rule our lives, there is no hope for middle and lower class.

Matthew Cohen, MSW
SJS Staff Writer