Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) recently said she has "very little tolerance" for students drowning in student-loan debt, because young people seem to want opportunities "dumped in your lap." Soon after, President Obama was in North Carolina, reminding students of the lawmaker's rhetoric.
When Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) said the very existence of the student-loan program is a "stage-three cancer of socialism," it wasn't long before Obama was using that on the stump, too.
Steve Kornacki had a smart piece on this the other day, noting that the president is "discovering the one benefit of a Republican Congress dominated by true believers," by "making the crazy work for him."
For a president to call out little-known members of the House is a bit unusual, and by doing so Obama could be accused of punching down. But that would be misreading what he was trying to achieve. His purpose in bringing up the Foxx and Akin comments was to highlight the extremely conservative spirit that animates today's Republican Party. Their words might have been unusually provocative, but when it comes to policy, Foxx and Akin are very much within the mainstream of the GOP.
This gets to one of the challenges Obama faces as he seeks reelection: to make voters understand that a vote for Mitt Romney is actually a vote to empower a Republican Party that is dominated by Foxx- and Akin-types.
Quite right. In fact, this came to mind when I watched Obama's speech to the DNC's Women's Leadership Forum on Friday.
The president covered quite a bit of ground, but there was one portion of the speech that struck me as especially important.
This quote, in particular, jumped out at me:
"This contraception fight in particular was illuminating. It was like being in a time machine. Republicans in Congress were going so far as to say an employer should be able to have a say in the health care decisions of its female employees. And I'm always puzzled by this. This is a party that says it prides itself on being rabidly anti-regulation. These are folks who claim to believe in freedom from government interference and meddling. But it doesn't seem to bother them when it comes to women's health.
"Now we've got governors and legislatures across the river in Virginia, up the road in Pennsylvania, all across the country saying that women can't be trusted to make your own decisions. They're pushing and passing bills forcing women to get ultrasounds, even if they don't want one. If you don't like it, the governor of Pennsylvania said you can 'close your eyes.' It's a quote.
"It's appalling. It's offensive. It's out of touch. And when it comes to what's going on out there, you're not going to close your eyes. Women across America aren't closing their eyes. As long as I'm President, I won't either. The days of male politicians controlling the health care decisions of our wives and our mothers, and our daughters and our sisters, that needs to come to an end."
When using Foxx's and Akin's quotes, Obama didn't use their names, but he didn't have to -- he was simply taking advantage of their extremism. Similarly, the president didn't specifically reference Republican Govs. Bob McDonnell or Tom Corbett during his speech on Friday, but there probably wasn't a person in the room who didn't know who Obama was referring to.
In the larger context, it's a reminder that Obama is running against Mitt Romney in November, but he's also running against Romney's radicalized party and everyone in it.
"Making the crazy work for him," indeed.
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and oh he has a lot of crazy to work with.
now if he hadn't signed that damned NDAA bill.
Good for team Obama!! Too many of the crazy shock jock opinions of Republicans go unchallenged, and frankly, unheard. It needs to be out there... make them own it.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the true argument with Student Loans the fact that government involvement has proved to increase costs at catastrophic rates and make it so the only people that can afford to go to college these days are the super privileged (like the Romney's of the world) or middle class people willing to mortgage their futures (first born, right arm) into oblivion?
Wouldn't we all rather enjoy an affordable system that isn't artificially inflated and supported by funds that really don't even exist yet?
No, it isn't. That assumes that colleges and universities are raising tuition to gobble up federal money, but that doesn't work unless the amount of loan money available to each student is keeping pace with the growth of tuition. In fact, the maximum amount that a person could borrow would have to be leading tuition rates for this 'theory' to be true. That is, the max loan amount would first rise, then be followed by a similar rise in tuition. I don't believe that there is any data that shows this to be happening.
A far more likely reason, and one tied to reality, is that state support of public colleges and universities has been going down, most drastically in California due to the effects of Prop 13, but not limited to California. Education is a popular thing to raid to make up budget shortfalls. To make up the difference, and to keep up with the growing population, schools are forced to hike tuition. So, the student population rises, state support falls, tuition goes up.
I just realized that I had accidentally implied that there was a maximum amount of money that a student could borrow. Bad word choice. There's a limit to how big an individual loan can be, but a person can take out more than one loan over time. If there were a lifetime cap, we wouldn't have such a big student debt problem (although I suppose we might then have a problem of people starting but not finishing school because they had maxed out before the end).
There is absolutely no consensus that the Bennet Hypothesis is correct. This is just one theory of many as to why student loans increase. Most experts (including our current DoE head) argue that in fact this isn't true, but the opposite is true. That because states have cut back their funding to universities and the federal government has cut funding to research for universities this has forced schools to look for alternative means to fund their projects. And they have chosen to do so via tuition costs. In fact it turns out that there's a lot of evidence suggesting that the caps on tuition assistance and the lack of access to tuition assistance increase the tuition rate far beyond any artificial rate.
If you are going to argue the Bennet Hypothesis then you at the very least need to understand what it is that you're arguing. This is not how the Bennet Hypothesis works. The argument is not that funds are not available (in fact the federal government does not default on it's student loan obligations w/ the college), but rather that the government making the funds available gives the school a bottom line for revenue. Therefore the inflation of tuition costs is coming about artificially because the schools know they can milk money from the government.
Blah got kicked out again (I hate my computer). I was going to add here that another major reason why we see tuition increases has to do w/ the fact that we have a larger total student population attending school, but a smaller portion graduating from school than we did 30+ years ago. So this creates a situation where you have people using the schools services, but not gaining the benefit of a college degree (most notably in the form of higher income). Therefore these students aren't able to pay back the debt that they owed to the college in a timely fashion and that forces the college to look for other means of making up the revenue loss (usually in the form of higher tuition rates, but also in the form of higher book costs, higher dorm costs, budget cut backs, etc). Remember that student loan amounts have not routinely increased to keep up w/ inflation and that student loans do not cover the entire tuition cost. I don't know a single person who had their federal assistance pay for more than 50% of college tuition, but w/ most people that I know from school it pays for roughly 1/3. The other 2/3rds are paid for from a combination of savings, work, deferred payment plans w/ the school itself (which also increases tuition costs, ftr), private loans, and scholarships and grants. FTR I should also add that private loans would also artificially inflate the market (unless they came from w/in the university). This is one major point of contention people have w/ the Bennet Hypothesis. He is assuming that the banks would not affect student loans, but if public loans would then private loans would as well (since both are artificial influence on the school itself). Yet Bennet rejected this notion in his hypothesis stating that it would work itself out because the school wouldn't have a guaranteed source of funding. And that leads us back into what MM said.
From what I understand college tuition is the only institution out-pacing the medical industry for cost increases. What exactly does that say? Has the cost of educating a pupil been truly reflected or has the industry responded to it's client's easy access to government subsidized loans?
It's hard to believe a private industry that is based on supply and demand would be able to charge what they do now if this relatively low cost money wasn't available.
God Bless the poor souls that are sucked into that black hole.
Hey Mouzer
Am I getting better at articulating my point without being offensive or am I in the DogHouse with my wife again?....blah!
Wedge issue: put the other Republican candidates on the spot. Disown the quoted policies of other members of the Hive or endorse them.
If I were feeling literary, I could probably turn this into a soliloquy.
Bravo to President Obama! People say they don't like or approve of Congress, but then vote to re-elect their own representatives, no matter how crazy. The point is that he can't make the rules alone and he needs to have super-majorities with D instead of R after their names to have any progress.
It also works against Romney because, even if he looks nice and convinces people he's actually more reasonable than he acted in the primaries, if he were to get elected, he would almost certainly have a Congressional majority of these clowns. Does anyone, no matter how nice they think Mitt is, believe that he would do anything to stand up to the crazy?
"....Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) said the very existence of the student-loan program is a "stage-three cancer of socialism...."
Crazy uncle alert! I mean, seriously! Glad to see Pres. Obama calling them out, because as Al Gore said years ago, this country is engaged in a "kind of cold civil war" - it was thought to be partisan hyperbole then - but Gore was absolutely correct.
I hope they also call Romney for serial lying to support crazy. He's at it again with "Mitt Math": http://therepublicon.blogspot.com/2012/04/mitt-math-hes-at-it-again.html
Obama is running against Congress as well as Mitt Romney. That requires Obama to paint both with the same brush--radicalism. The Dems will be using the same theme in a lot of races. I believe that the Tea Party is going to be swept away along with Republicans in November. It is only a question of how many.
Romney is of course banking on the short attention span of voters not remembering anything he has said in the past.
Rachel, keep exposing his lies. You do a fantastic job of keeping them honest, which admittedly is a full-time job.
love it! forces willard to defend 'em or disown 'em. dick and spiro were doing this back in the days of flower power. whenever some black panther or sds radical spouted something crazy, it was attributed to the mainline democrats. for the last thirty years the g.o.p. has had it all one way as the gutless, clueless, mainline media filed off its rough edges before offering them up as just another side of the argument. what i regret is that its taken the democrats so long to catch on.
Here are my points, which ones are incorrect:
1. As a general statement, debt for a young person is bad and a horrible way to start off a career.
2. Why not work to lower the cost of college education instead of making it easier to pile up mounds of debt? Dorms that use to be a cinder block room with bunk beds are now luxurious suites with extras.
3. Community colleges make more sense economically for the first two years of education for most majors. Seems government money should incentivize more students going there.
1. As a general statement, yes. But as reality, no student wants to continue living at home. Unless they do so, most kids have no option other than to borrow. Not every mom & dad can foot the bill for them. Plus it's good to have established a credit rating before graduating college.
2. You get what you pay for. The quality of education you get from U. of Phoenix isn't going to be the same as you get from Stanford or Harvard or even the U. of Iowa. Sorry Phoenixes, but that's just the way it is. And the dorm my son lived in 5 years ago was still a cinder block room with a bunk bed and no luxuries. Control costs, in part by keeping the interest rates low on those loans.
3. I won't argue with this one. It does make the most sense for most students.
Hello RobDon,
Your points are not incorrect, but the answers might be for the wrong questions.
The thing a student needs to make a decision about good/bad debt is a cost-beneifts analysis.
1 - Question: when is student debt good and bad?
- debt where income boost from a degree exceeds interest payment is beneficial
- debt where interest payments exceed income boost from a degree is bad
2 - Question: why is US education becoming unaffordable?
- education funding has been reduced to fund the war on drugs and new prisons
- bachelors degree reduces drug incarceration 95%
- declining US education causes more youth to resort to drug sales to make money
3 - Question: what kind of education boosts income?
- science based associates degree boosts income 200% (approx)
- science based bachelors degree boosts income 300% (approx)
- liberal arts associates degree does not boost income (approx)
- liberal arts bachelors degree boosts income 50% (approx)
- liberal arts masters degree or credential boosts income 100% (approx)
I pretty much agree with the comments. My only remark is to:
So? "Wants" are not the major concerns here. I lived at home to attend a community college which with a small scholarship that covered most of the tuition and my work study, was piratically free.
I've seen students bypass similar offers because they wanted to move out "on their own."
1. Yes, but having a college education is an investment in your future. It's not ideal to have debt in any situation, but sometimes debt can be justified. A student loan is on par as an investment in your future w/ owning a house. It's not like a car loan: the debt you incur going to college will actually make a huge impact on your quality of life and your ability to avoid future debts. If you can do it w/o debt go right ahead. But if you cannot this is the second best alternative. Just like if you can buy a house w/o debt this is what you should do. But since most people cannot they opt for a mortgage. You do not poo-poo mortgages, so presumably you would not and should not poo-poo student loans.
2. No they are not. The average dorm sits 2 people and is 8x10 or 10x10. They are not luxury suites. I have no idea where you got this information. Maybe there are some colleges to which this applies, but for the vast majority this is a laughably ignorant statement.
People are already doing this. The average student does not go to a private college. The average student goes to a public college and does not live on dorm after the first year. Additionally this argument only makes sense if you believe that community colleges and the likes are not also paid for by federal dollars and debt. Newsflash: people take loans out to pay for community college too. So now we're talking about instead of 60,000$ of debt, 40,000$ of debt. While 40 is still better than 60 it's still debt. I am not at all sure why you'd think this argument is somehow superior.
3. Community colleges also have more than twice the drop out rate of regular colleges. This only makes sense as a viable alternative (from the government's perspective, anyways) if you are looking at immediate costs RD. I would personally encourage someone to go to community college if I knew they were a person who was likely to stay in school and finish. Students who live on dorms are more likely to complete college than students who do not. So it becomes an issue of an individual basis. Unfortunately this is one situation where the government can't be small enough to help w/ the situation. All one can do is make sure that the general public is aware of the benefits of going to CC so that people can exercise that option if they choose to.
I don't think it is the second best option. Looking at scholarships, apprentice programs, employers who will pay for school, military opportunities, and the list goes on. I don't agree that if you don't have the money to pay for it then taking out a loan is the next best thing.
This, I believe. This is part of the reason why many colleges are outsourcing building student housing and most new construction and/or renovations include common living areas, private baths, and many more amenities...they are having to compete with local apartment complexes and the like. Any 8x10 cinder block dorm rooms are legacy, not new construction or recent renovations. But, I agree they still do exist.
There's a huge difference between 40,000 and 60,000 in debt! I don't argue that debt is not necessary but graduating with 80,000/100,000 etc worth of debt is dumb, IMHO. There are other means to the same end.
Immediate or delayed, cost should always be looked at as a priority in the equation.
Obama has done an outstanding job fixing a complicated economic problem.
Wealth is based on four variables:
Pres. Obama is working to fix all 4 at the same time.
Republicans have been working to wreck all 4 at the same time.
The difficulty is that the Republican agenda is that fear becomes very popular when the economy collapses, and each item on the Republican agenda preys on fear.
"Illegal Immigrants" do not actually exist. The issue is that employers are required to advertise in the local newspaper for a few weeks before hiring outside the country to document a lack of US citizens, which is provided with about $250 to the following organization. The workers are not illegal - employer is supposed to file for the work visa.
The population growth of the US occurred because of immigration. With the exception of the post-WW-II baby boom, 100% of US population increase is exclusively due to immigrants with the exception of the period from 1948 to 1968.
About 3 million undocumented immigrants fled the US between 2008 & 2009 because revised Patriot Act provisions allow states to criminalize Mexican with visas lasting over 2 weeks by requiring drivers licenses for longer stays but prohibiting access to drivers licenses. This "criminalized" the immigrant population, who fled to avoid prison and deportation. The resulting housing abandonment collapsed banks and wall street.
Try the 11th century Mr. President, they want us to go back to the 11th century..
Have people now forgotten FDR's campaign against "Martin, Barton, and Fish?" It was a great rallying cry and one that Obama should renew this year with some equal slogan such as "Ryan, Atkin, and Foxx."