Driven by their mania for undercutting anything President Obama is for, Republicans have just shrunk to a new low (is that possible?).
They just blocked a vote (that thing that's called a filibuster but really just means it now requires 60 votes to pass anything in the Senate) on the bill that would have frozen the Stafford student loan interest rate at 3.4% for the next two years. If this doesn't pass, it will automatically double to 6.8% on July 1.
This is a separate bill from the one introduced by Senator Elizabeth Warren, which would lower that 3.4% to the same rates that banks pay to borrow the money they turn around and lend students. Currently that rate is 0.75%. Surely that bill is doomed too if they blocked this one.
This means that fatcat banks are raking in money on student loan debt. Sure, they should get some profit and an offset for loans that cannot be collected. But that is an obscene profit at the expense of students. Think what it will be if it doubles to 6.8% and the banks still borrow at 0.75%.
Just another example of Republicans playing politics at the expense of the needs of the people.
Ralph
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Not content with that show of meanness by the Senate, the House today also took a vote to rival it in meanness.
ReplyDeleteChiefly along party lines, with a few crossovers, the House passed an amendment to the Homeland Security Spending Bill to block the administration from delaying the deportation of certain young, low -priority undocumented immigrants who would be eligible to stay here under the Dream Act if it passes.