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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSen. Warren’s Bill Gets Cold Shoulder as Student Loan Rates Spike Monday
by Lauren McCauley
Despite the groundswell of support behind Senator Elizabeth Warrens (D-Mass.) popular student loan proposal, Senate leaders have dismissed the legislation opting instead to let student interest rates double Monday as they pack their bags for a Fourth of July holiday recess.
Because of Congressional inaction, students will be left in the lurch as federal Stafford loans spike to 6.8 percent.
The Warren bill proposes to tie student loan interest rates to the same discounted rates given to big banks from the Federal Reserve, lowering student loan rates to 0.75 percent and saving students thousands of dollars.
We subsidize bankers whose excesses blew up the economy, why not subsidize kids struggling to pay for the education we say they need? writes Robert Borosage. However, he adds that the legislators dismiss the Warren proposal out of hand.
With more support than any other proposal, petitions backing the bill have received over a million signatures and presidents from more than 25 colleges have backed the legislation. A recent poll conducted by Public Policy Polling found that 60 percent of respondents backed Warrens idea, including 56 percent of Republicans.
However, despite the widespread popularity, the bill has been systematically ignored by Congress and has not yet come up for a vote.
more
http://sandiegofreepress.org/2013/06/sen-warrens-bill-gets-cold-shoulder-as-student-loan-rates-spike-monday/
Turbineguy
(37,212 posts)The repubs are trying to invent a tax cut to pay for it.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)We really, really need to wrest control of the Senate away from the Republicans.
satire thingy here
msongs
(67,199 posts)rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)majority is the bought and paid for corporitists like Reid. The minority includes the progressives like Sen Warren and a few others.
Triana
(22,666 posts)the people, they are SADLY mistaken.
We have VERY FEW actual representatives in Washington - Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders (who is an Indy, not even a Dem but does the work of THE PEOPLE), Alan Grayson - just so very few.
nineteen50
(1,187 posts)sounds like a back door bailout.
Fire Walk With Me
(38,893 posts)and enslaving the young with ludicrous debt.
Also, check out the Strike Debt Rolling Jubilee, an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street, who are using the debt system against itself, buying up bad debt for pennies on the dollar through donations, and forgiving it
Patiod
(11,816 posts)A great opportunity to point out to our Republican friends and family on FB and elsewhere that
1) Obama has been warning that Congress was going to let this happen
2) Elizabeth Warren is trying to help the situation
3) that this is 100% in the lap of the Republicans they love so dearly
Zorra
(27,670 posts)is one of the few Senators who is not owned by these private interests. You can expect her to be ignored and isolated by the compromised majority of both Democratic and Republican Senators as she continues to fight against the banksters for democracy and the 99%
"Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to ; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty."
"...wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government..."
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree."
"I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised, for the preservation of freedom and happiness...Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish & improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils [tyranny, oppression, etc.] and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance."
Quotes by Thomas Jefferson, founder of the Democratic Party
ZRT2209
(1,357 posts)dtom67
(634 posts), but don't blame the government; government is just a tool.
But who controls the Tool?
qui bono ?
Ilsa
(61,675 posts)Dustlawyer
(10,493 posts)Recently in Brazil, they had massive protest sparked by a hike in bus fares. We DO NOT have Representative government! We need to clean house and publicly fund elections! Lets vote out all of the corrupt, old career politicians that have sold us out b/c this shit has gotten way out of hand! Republicans and Democrats alike have gone in for corporate money and that is why they spy on us. They do not want to be surprised again by OWS! We are more corrupt than the worst 3rd world country.
Growing up I used to be proud that my country did not torture people, nor spy on its citizens, that was the Soviet Union. Now we are the world's Soviet Union! I am an American and I do not stand for what my country is doing. This is totally unacceptable! Who feels the same way?
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)All this theater and angst about every single policy has become a sick charade at this point. The Plutonomy that runs this country gets everything they want now. They get this. They will get Keystone. They will get the Trans-Pacific.
We do not have a representative government anymore. Nothing coming out of this government has even remotely resembled what the people want for some time now.
And now the Constitution is being dismantled, and a spy apparatus that surpasses the capabilities of any previous totalitarian government is now in place.
And the propaganda machine is in place too, droning on that we have nothing to be upset about.
This is corporate fascism, come to call.
xtraxritical
(3,576 posts)fasttense
(17,301 posts)reformist2
(9,841 posts)blackspade
(10,056 posts)a popular program or idea goes under the congressional corporate bus.....
oldandhappy
(6,719 posts)does not care about people.
ananda
(28,783 posts)..