Six Dollars or a Job?

Phil Kerpen, Contributing Author: As Obama heads to Las Vegas to tout a fake controversy over extending subsidized interest rates on federal Stafford Loans, American Commitment released a new video that explains the remarkably low stakes in this distraction from the real issue for new graduates: jobs.
Phony Student Loan Issue extract: The interest rate on federal Stafford Loans is a phony political issue. The 6.8 percent interest rate was slashed — at taxpayer expense — to 3.4 percent last year. Now Obama and Democrats in Congress are acting as if the rate returning to its usual level is an economic catastrophe for students. It isn’t. We’re talking about a difference of $6 per month on new loans. Existing loans are unaffected. The student debt problem is real, but the Stafford Loan interest rate issue is not. . . .

The House has already passed legislation, H R 4628, that extends the current Stafford Loan interest rate for another year, averting that $6 per month disaster that Obama has been focusing on out on the stump. The bill also does something much more significant: it repeals the so-called Prevention Fund, a multi-billion-dollar slush fund created by Obama’s stimulus bill and then expanded and funded even more lavishly — and automatically, without annual appropriations—by the president’s health care law.

The Prevention Fund is the most egregious type of federal spending because it uses our federal tax dollars to raise our taxes and limit our freedoms at the state and local levels. Specifically, it provides taxpayer-funded grants for television advertising, lobbying campaigns, and other activities aimed at raising taxes on soft drinks, imposing zoning restrictions on fast food restaurants, imposing smoking bans, and other such nanny-state favorites. . . . [Read More]
--------------
Phil Kerpen is the president of American Commitment and the author of Democracy Denied: How Obama is Bypassing Congress to Radically Transform America – and How to Stop Him. He is a contributing author for the ARRA News Service.

---

Tags:Student Loans, Stafford, Jobs, Economy, Unemployment, Barack Obama, UNLV, Las Vegas, Obama student loans, American Commitment, Phil Kerpen, Phony Student Loan Issue To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!