Lost in a news cycle dominated by hawaiian birth certificates, Cambridge police and public option is a story about Obama's effort to become the biggest provider of school loans in the nation.
But what we learned this week from the CBO is that his plan will save only half of what he claims it would.
I'll let Stephen Spruiell from NRO take over from here:
But shouldn't we still support the option that would save money, even if it would save less that the administration claims? The answer is that getting the government out of the student-loans business altogether would save taxpayers the most money, but that's not even part of the discussion. Government-subsidized financing for college has become a middle-class entitlement. We wouldn't be facing this choice if the government hadn't first subsidized private lenders and then set up a "public option" to "compete" with them.
This is the very choice that Obama wants to force on health care. If Congress enacts his health-care agenda, chances are good that some future Democratic president will point out how much we "waste" by subsidizing private coverage and how much we would "save" if we just forced everyone to take the public option. And, as is the case with Obama's student loan plan, the bulk of those savings would be chimerical, based on accounting tricks. Lost in the debate will be the notion that the government shouldn't have intervened in the first place.
I think Mr. Spruill’s assertion fails to look at the big picture and to compare student loan programs with socialized healthcare is a bit like comparing apples to oranges grown on another planet...
ReplyDeleteStudent loan programs are a hand up initiative that provides the student the means to repay their debt to the government by gaining an education and access into higher paying jobs. Due to the massive exodus of manufacturing jobs in America (70% of all jobs are service industry related and the number grows daily) because to off shoring American jobs to India, China, Mexico and Eastern Europe, Americans need this hand up to remain competitive and employable in today’s job market. We cannot all work in low level service jobs such as fast food. By offering easily accessible government backed loans, we ensure that Americans will fill the high tech and high paying jobs here at home, increasing the average American family income and our failing economy.
It is almost laughable to call government loans a middle class entitlement since many of the people who take advantage of Government backed student loans are from low income families who would be unable to attend college without them. The rich and upper middle class can already afford to send their children to college so I think the tag of entitlement is misplaced here.
By educating a generation of Americans, we provide them with a means to go out and make a living and increase the likeliness that their children will go on to college, effectively breaking the cycle of poverty and creating a new generation of middle class citizens who pay taxes and contribute to the U.S. economy by having more spending power.
Teach a man to fish and he will never go hungry again. Spruill would rather Obama hand out a fish a day to uneducated, unemployable Americans with no education or means to further it? In truth, Mr. Spruill seems to me more socialist than Obama.
Conservatives, true conservatives, have always spoken from a platform of hand-ups, not hand-outs. It is almost offensive to hear this fundamental ideal smeared because it happens to be a Democrat that finally followed through on the promise of assisting people in furthering their education, rather than drowning in the sorrows of poverty. If we would focus more on education and training of our citizens, perhaps there would be no need for such wasteful and socialist programs like welfare and socialized healthcare. With education comes independence and self reliability from hand-outs and social programs. One does not have the right to ask for less government spending; yet fail to initiate a plan to decrease this spending. Education is one of the key factors to the survivability of this nation in a world were globalization has allowed millions of American jobs to move overseas, at the expense of our uneducated.