Seems the President wants control over higher education, too:
…A few days ago, another Secretary of Education—Lamar Alexander—inveighed in WaPo on what the folks at Department of Education “haven’t told us.” Senator Alexander notes that DOE plans to borrow from the Fed at a 2.8 percent interest rate, lend to students at 6.8, and splurge with the difference with a massive new spending program. He reports that the Congressional Budget Office has lowered the estimated savings from kicking out the private lenders from $87 billion to something like $47 billion. Some 2,000 private lenders will be forced out of this business. Services to students driven by industry competition will be eliminated in favor of typical federal bureaucratic “efficiency.” And those “educators, engineers and computer scientists—the backbone of the new economy”? They will be spending years longer and paying lots more to pay back loans that are actually being used to fund Congressmen’s favorite edu-pork programs.
The effort to shoehorn the direct lending program into the health care reconciliation bill seems odd on its face. CBS News suggests that the maneuver is prompted partly by Democrats trying to get on top of the wave of student protest over college costs that surfaced during the March 4 campus demonstrations. But CBS also thinks that the Democrats are just grabbing an opportunity that might not come again. “Reconciliation,” if it works, is a way of short-circuiting all the inconvenience of having to line up sixty votes for a controversial measure. Why not slide as much unpopular legislation as possible into one giant, unpopular, economy-ruining, budget-busting, anti-democratic bill?…
It will be quite the boondoggle, if it goes forward. Attentive readers will know my opinion about student loans: they are a scam. A way for colleges and bankers to get rich off of the foolish actions of youngsters suckered by tales of easy money once they’ve got a college degree to their name. All those ads you see on TV about getting a computer programming degree or becoming a chef – financed by student loans…and how many kids do you think really get all that much out of it?
Aside from that, however, what we have here is an attempt by Obama and his Democrats to have full control over a major portion of funding for higher education. Now instead of a scam, we’ll have a government pork-barrel scam. Favored groups will get more loans; favored colleges will find the skids greased…Congressional pet projects will get funded on the side. To top it all off, the Democrats will get kids in college where they can be propagandized by the ignorant, narrow-minded, junior-league Leninsts who run the education show.
Its all a win for Democrats. Not so much for education, the kids or the United States of America. As per usual, the problem here is that government is involved, at all. Government merely distorts – and never in a good way. Someone is always having a rake off. Someone is always misappropriating funds. Someone is always putting out substandard product. Its just the way it is because its all other peoples’ money. It is our economic life, but its play cash to them.
Education is a grand thing – and anyone who is determined to obtain it will do so. We don’t need government setting the agenda or providing the funds. Let the kids work at it; let their parents help; let good souls find the means for a hard working kid to get in to a decent school…but keep government out of it. Education is for free people – not for government monopolies.
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