Student Loan Ripoff a Test of GOP Rhetoric

Student Loan Ripoff a Test of GOP Rhetoric
Dick Morris
Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2005


Special-interest legislation doesn't get much more obnoxious than the bill now making its way though Congress to clamp down on students and former students who want to refinance their loans at lower interest rates. They are about to be severely punished for seeking not only an education but a debt-free life afterwards.

While homeowners can refinance their mortgages as often as they want and relieve themselves of high-interest debt when rates cycle downward, student and former-student debtors are only permitted to refinance once for the lifetime of the loan! And now the House is considering legislation that would stop students who are in school from keeping their current interest rate of 4.75 percent and would instead force them to pay 7.9 percent, creating a lifetime burden entirely unjustified by the lending market.

Many students are locked into rates that approach 9 or 10 percent, reminders of the grim economic days of the early 1980s, and find themselves with no flexibility. Frequently, students use their once-only refinancing option shortly after graduation and find themselves helpless as the market interest rates drop ever lower.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/11/16/83409.shtml

then they slash pell grants and make life more difficult for those who must rely on loans to get their education. And assuming you can afford to go to school (or go back for a new career) and you make it through, where are the better paying jobs???

has ever actually made it "on their own".

One of my favorite parts of "The Big Lebowski" is when his daughter Maude reveals to The Dude that Lebowski isn't the big shot he says he is, but is living on money from his wife and is pretty much an all-around failure.

Their parents and other self-made people were generally normal, if not very very interesting, decent, LIBERAL people.

The second gen blows the money and ruins the family biz, in my experience.

will start saying something along the lines of, "loan lackeys" or "loan slackers". And like everything they do, they will throw the baby out with the bath water and all those that really need the loans and the ones that actually pay them back on time (which is the majority of the people who get them) will be shit out of luck. Wait for it.