Politics
GOP, Marco Rubio Block Democrats' Election-Year Bill on Student Loans
Around the State
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio
Bad bill, insists Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Miami, who sided with the GOP in the 52-45 vote. “Congress should prevent the loan rate hike and pay for it by targeting the very root of this increase -- a provision in the 2010 federal health care law that raids student aid to the tune of $9 billion in order to “pay for” other parts of Obamacare,” Rubio wrote in a FOX News editorial on Tuesday.
The vote on the bill fell far short of the 60 needed by the Democrats to keep the Republicans from an ability to launch into an election-year filibuster.
Both parties support keeping the interest rates on the loans for low- and middle-income students from leaping to 6.8 percent from 3.4 percent on July 1. But in an effort to score some partisan points before the fall elections, Democrats offered up a bill that singled out for more taxation top shareholders of private-corporation stock. Most senators predicted the bill was unlikely to succeed Tuesday.
Republicans have countered that instead of further increasing the deficit, money to cover student loans should come from money set aside for the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, more commonly referred to as Obamacare.
Said Rubio, “Since this problem is of President Obama’s own making, we should clean up this latest Obamacare mess by ending this slush fund and applying the savings to prevent the upcoming rate increase.”
President Barack Obama has threatened to veto any effort by Republican senators to eliminate the preventive health care fund.
According to the Sun-Sentinel, an increase in the interest rate on the loan would mean an average increase of $979 for the more than 450,000 Florida students due to be paying the loan July 1.
Reach Jim Turner at jturner@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 215-9889.
Comments (22)
What is it that Mad Hatter Tea Party Republicans don't understand about a loan? Loan: A thing that is borrowed, esp. a sum of money that is expected to be paid back with interest.
I would have thought Mad Hatters would learned their lesson about opposing such loans with the success of GM and Chrysler.
Blocking this is a losing political proposition, but perhaps that what Mad Hatters want - anything, ANYTHING to try and defeat Obama, no matter the collateral damage, even if it's your own country's childrens' futures. Pathetic!
1) Drive up the price of the item to be borrowed against and,
2) Allow for and, in fact, encourage, reckless borrowing (both due to the perception of cheap money) and,
3) Prevent innovation in the marketplace and the subsequent improvement in the product or service by allowing and, in fact, encouraging, the subsidized item to remain uncompetitive.
I find it personally offensive that our "government" has the unmitigated gall to steal from the rest of us in order to buy votes from those who "earn" their living in the subsidized, price-inflated world of banking and academia and for taking advantage of the gullibility of college students by creating the perceived availability of something for nothing.
Then ... in different ways ... realize how the extremist, rightwing, almost fascist GOP of today is doing the very same thing that the Mafia did in its heyday ... running roughshod over the majority of the people and TAKING AWAY the traditional liberty and self-worth that the people worked so hard to develop during The Great American Century
1. Government hasn't helped any of the folks you mentioned. Poverty is as high as it has ever been despite all of the big government programs designed to buy votes...I mean eliminate it.
2. Also, I know it is cute and trendy to call conservatives fascist, try to link conservatives to Hitler. However, Hitler was a big government socialist. So you can add his death toll to the 100,000,000+ other dead from various socialist experiments of the 20th century. But I'm sure you guys are so much smarter so your version will be utopia.
And, do yourself a favor and spend some time learning that BOTH Nazism and Fascism (two very different things) were CLEARLY extreme rightwing philosophies perpetrated on the citizens of two different countries by two extremist rightwing dictators ... that's r-i-g-h-t-w-i-n-g!
Dumb.
And very sad.
In your world we'd even cut all public financed primary and secondary education.
YES!!!!! You are finally getting it.
You're just an idiot.
(And you proved the point that "SeanK" made below!)
(Note that it's primarily "Red States" (including Florida) that evidence the poorest-performing public education systems in the U.S.)
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