Saturday, April 14, 2012

Those Out to End Student Loans

* Thankfully, our children are no longer in college.  When my husband and I went to college in the early 1970's, we took out student loans, and were able to pay them back.  Tuition was lower then and we were lucky to have jobs after graduation. Now some Republicans want to end student loans and Pell Grants.

In a post titled, Rep. Virginia Foxx has "little tolerance" for student loans, parents and current and future college students can see a peak into the Republican agenda at Daily Kos:

....Ladies and gentlemen, the deep thoughts and abiding wisdom of Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), complaining to G. Gordon Liddy (yeah, I know) about the young kids today and how they should all just get a job, hippie:
I went through school, I worked my way through, it took me seven years, I never borrowed a dime of money. He borrowed a little bit because we both were totally on our own when we went to college, totally. [...] I have very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because there’s no reason for that. We live in an opportunity society and people are forgetting that. I remind folks all the time that the Declaration of Independence says “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” You don’t have it dumped in your lap....
Virginia Foxx's voting record shows that she even voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Act (see Washington Post).  Seriously.   Govtrack has rated her ideology as a "far-right Republican" in the House of Representatives.
Rep. Virginia Foxx isn't the only problem.  Republican Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan would end Pell Grants, according to Think Progress:

The House Republican budget makes some deeply flawed arguments about higher education. It claims both that rising financial aid is driving college tuition costs upward and that Pell Grants, which help cover tuition costs for low-income Americans, don’t go to the “truly needy.” Republicans — led by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) — use these falsehoods to justify cutting the Pell Grant program by $200 billion.

According to an analysis by the Education Trust that was provided to the Huffington Post, the House Republican budget would ultimately knock more than one million students off of Pell Grants entirely:

  More than 1 million students would lose Pell grants entirely over the next 10       years under Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget, according to an analysis that the national reform organization Education Trust provided to The Huffington Post.....


If you think you'll need college loans or Pell Grants, you might want to vote for Democrats, instead of Republicans.  We've seen what the Republican House leadership has on their agenda and we know their intentions to destroy any help for college students.  We cannot allow the Republicans to have a majority in the House or the Senate.  They'll cut many programs in order to get more tax cuts for their wealthy friends.

This video from YouTube says it all: