As the year is winding down, and we are spending more time with family and friends, there is one last message we need to send to our senators about fighting for students.
In September, the House of Representatives passed the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA), which would help the United States produce more college graduates by 2020 than any other country, while also helping states improve early-childhood education and job-training programs. This bill helps students at some of the most crucial stages in their education, when spiraling costs can have the most detrimental effects on their futures.
Three months have passed and the Senate has done nothing to pass this extraordinary bill. In any other year, such a wide-ranging and innovative investment in our future would be cause for big headlines, and politicians would be working around the clock to take a leadership role in getting it passed. But as 2009 comes to an end, this huge boost for our education system faces an uncertain future in the U.S. Senate.
SAFRA would provide $87 billion in assistance to students, making college affordable and transforming the way our student loan programs operate. It would expand quality early education opportunities, putting more children on the path to success in school. It would strengthen community colleges and training programs to help build a highly-skilled, innovative, 21st-century workforce ready for the rigors of a global economy. And it would even take steps to reduce the deficit.
We all know how important the next year is going to be for the fight to reform education in America. Let’s start 2010 by making sure that Congress finishes what it started in 2009.
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As President Obama himself said in August, “UPS and FedEx are doing just fine…It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.”
SAFRA would make the Department of Education the only source of loans for students. This will drive up costs and build bureaucracies.
SAFRA’s proposed savings are fictitious. They are based on student loan interest rates that are scheduled to increase from 3.4% to 6.8% in 2012-2013. Are we really to believe that Congress is going to double student’s interest rates in three years time? No! But that’s what the current law says, so that’s what the CBO scores. These are savings for SAFRA that will never materialize. SAFRA’s costs will ad more to the deficit.
SAFRA does nothing to stem the cost of education. Higher Education costs have risen at 4-times the rate of inflation for the past 30 years. Reform student lending ahead of reforming the enormous cost of Higher Education is only treating the symptom, not fixing the problem.
There are political agendas at work here and students and taxpayers will be the victims.