Thursday, July 12, 2007

Sure...

At NROnline, Bill McMorris writes about legislation recently passed by the House of Representatives to cut student loan interest rates:

This bill also fails to deliver on the Democratic promise to make college more accessible to lower-income students. Cutting interest rates and forgiving debt serve to benefit college graduates, not perspective students. The Republican proposal, which would aid lower-income families by increasing Pell Grants without relieving individuals of their responsibility to repay their loans, was rejected along partisan lines.
Assuming for the sake of argument that he means prospective students, I still don't know what this means. If a low-income student goes to college, graduates, and gets a break on their loan repayment, that's not helping low-income students because they're technically not students anymore? And while using the money to fund Pell grants instead of cut interest rates is actually a pretty good idea, I can't help but note that the House Republicans had markedly less enthusiasm for taking money from the student loan companies who contribute generously to their campaigns and giving it to the poor college students who don't vote for them back when they controlled Congress and were in a position to actually do it.

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