Obama Proposes Higher Debt Burden For Grad School Students

Posted: 14 Feb 2011 05:00 PM PST

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Oh, I am so tired of these political minions who talk out of both sides of their mouth -- and their media enablers. Have you noticed how few journalists even think about our point of view? The Iraq and Afghanistan wars continue to drain the national treasury and beggar our nation, and the president just signed a huge tax cut package FOR MILLIONAIRES AND BILLIONAIRES. Hell-o?
And somehow, we're supposed to pretend that those things do not contradict this "austerity" blitz from a Democratic president. We're supposed to nod and agree when they justifying it by saying stupid things like, "We're cutting back on spending, just like Americans do around their kitchen tables."
As if we all pay cash for our homes and cars.
And now, at a time when new college graduates face record levels of unemployment, we're going to add this to the average family's economic burdens. Why should we believe anything they say about the deficit "crisis" when they don't address the ten-ton WAR and TAX CUT elephants in the national living room?

WASHINGTON -- In his 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama promised thatinvestment in education and getting the next generation of Americans ready to face their own "Sputnik" moment would be a focus of his administration. But at least one component of his FY 2012 budget, which will be released tomorrow, will likely pile more debt upon students who decide to pursue graduate school, potentially making the dream of higher education even more unattainablefor many Americans. The move, say administration officials, is needed to ensure that a popular financial aid award stays available at current levels.
In an interview on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, Office of Management and Budget Director Jacob Lew said that interest on graduate school loans will begin building up while students are still in school. Currently, interest does not begin compiling until after students graduate.Host Candy Crowley questioned Lew about whether this would make graduate school less accessible for many Americans:

CROWLEY: Here's the problem, I guess. If you are a graduate -- let's take one of your examples. You're a graduate student; you are, right now, getting loans. You don't have to pay those loans or any interest on them until you graduate. But now you have to pay -- or it accumulates, I'm assuming -- you have to pay interest beginning on day one of grad school, and that makes it so that you can't go to grad school.
LEW: Well, let's just be clear. Interest will build up, but students won't have to pay until they graduate. So it will increase the burden for paying back the loans, but it will not reduce access to education. That's, I think, part of how you can responsibly have a plan that deals with the challenge of solving our fiscal crisis, getting out of the situation where the deficit is growing and growing, but also investing in the future.

Unbelievable. Don't these economic wizards have any friends or relatives outside that Beltway bubble, someone who could knock some sense into them?