Front Page  »  

Stop student loan rate hikes

June 22, 2012

Lois Capps

OPINION By LOIS CAPPS

I wanted to give an update on an important issue that will affect many Central Coast residents and families if it’s not resolved soon.

Without Congressional action student loan interest rates will double on July 1st.

I am adamantly opposed to the doubling of these interest rates and am working to keep it from happening.

In California, more than 572,000 student borrowers would pay nearly a half billion dollars in additional interest payments over the course of one year, if interest rates are allowed to double to 6.8 percent.  This would cost the average student about $1,000 over the course of the loan.

That’s why I’m supporting the Stop the Rate Hike Act of 2012, which would hold interest rates steady at 3.4 percent.  To ensure we don’t increase our deficit, the bill pays for the cost of maintaining the lower interest rate by eliminating unnecessary taxpayer subsidies to large oil and gas companies.

Making sure young people have access to affordable higher education is essential for their success. Too many of them, and their families, are already struggling to pay for college and it would be just plain wrong to let the rates on their loans double.

I know that keeping the interest rates low isn’t a silver bullet to higher education affordability – but it is an important step to containing the growing cost of college, which has been skyrocketing in the wake of devastating state budget cuts.

Ensuring that the cost of attending a public university in California isn’t out of reach for all qualified students and their families will require a renewed commitment to investing in higher education.

Please know that I strongly believe in keeping college affordable, as it is absolutely critical in order to ensure that our country has a strong workforce in today’s global economy.


Loading...
Subjects:             
Related:


47 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

The sad truth is that students and their parents have signed on these loans wishing that the future will take care of itself. However, in the last survey I read, roughly 80% of graduation seniors ( those back in June) had planned to move back home after graduation… in a few months, the pain of what those accumulated loans actual mean will be apparent to all.


Reducing the rates on a loan isn’t the answer, job creation is. If you have a great job, loans seldom affect you… however, the smallest debt will crush you without an income stream.


What are you going to do to bring jobs back to America, protect the businesses that exist in America, help to rebuild America’s industries and train the men and women we will need to participate in our future’s workforce?? … or forget the whole thing… you can just play golf with the President.


0

I find it incredibly transparent that the Democrats are the ones who insisted that the interest rates would increase in July 2012 back when they voted the rate cut in the first place.


Additionally, loans wouldn’t be a problem without the exorbitant costs of higher education. Which have increased at an alarming rate, far outpacing all other sectors of the economy. I attribute this to the fact that university professors and staff members are overwhelmingly liberal and all their buddies up in the state capitols and Washington (Like YOU Lois.) continuously vote to increase their salaries and benefits to unreasonable levels, again far outpacing other sectors of employment.


So please Lois, can it. I can’t stand to listen to your blatant spin and your unwavering, unthinking support of the Democrat’s progressive platform and ideals.


0

It’s the banksters again, Plenty of their printed dollars to lend elevateing the tuitions. Same story with Real Estate.

But like RE greed got in the way again and like RE the tuitions will crash. That’s why the scumbags are looking for rich foreign kids now. The State schools were established for….that state’s kids, at least partially paid for by that state’s parents. Now we are going to keep the dream (and obnoxious profits) going for them as they educate the foriegn competetion’s kids which keep OUR kids out while we still pay.

Reason #736547563,9585 this country is done, done in by the enemy within……..us.


0

“exorbitant costs”?


A result of unwarranted government intervention in the education market.


Just more evidence to get the government out of the education business.


Lois Capps, TEAR DOWN THAT WALL!


0

“A result of unwarranted government intervention….” exactly, like I said, the banksters, who are one and the same now. Who finances government, the Feds, that means government is EMPLOYED by the banksters and they are a private, for profit ‘business” owned as much or more by foreign stock holders as it is Americans. That also means our policies are being established by foreigners. These Fed stockholders identities are mostly being kept secret and the Fed is impenetrable to even the Congress. It gets even worse.

Back to tuitions, check today’s TRIB. in the”vOICES” Sec. to see what students indebtedness to these bankers for their worthless printed $169 billion a yr. really provided the kids. Not much anymore while tuition skyrockets.

When the banks saw they weren’tt going to see the money back due to the collapse they fomented, they instructed the congress to make student debt the only type that shall be non-dischargable in bankruptcy!!.

Here’s the killer, While Mitt and Barak are only cheerleading us regarding any “change”, which are hollow promises anyway, Ron Paul was informing us to all these facts and more, but was suppressed by major media. It’s all out now and it’s glareing, So where’s the response besides the sound of crickets, even though the presidential elections are being manipulated (now add just a couple of billionaires dumping millions into Mitt’s campaign kitty for the promise of a bombed Iran).

One more point, Goldman Sachs has been either the top or in the top two Presidential campaign contributors for the last three or four elections. That’s called “buying the elections” effectively. They now do it with YOUR taxpayer money thru TARP. Perfectly disgusting and “legal”.

The Hidden Government” is the new term for these international group of banking theives.

Some say Paul was the last oppurntunity for the U.S. before we become totally indefensible to western banking. We are very close to finding out.


It goes on and on…….. sorry for the rant, the moderator prefers keeping topics rather local, but I got kids and I was thinking about them having, I don’t kbow, a chance in life??


0

Funny you should mention the “Hidden Government.” Check this out:


The Shadow Government


http://www.constitution.org/shad4816.htm


0

Excellent. Complete, thorough and I’d love to drop 300 million of ’em on leaflets all over this sleeping country. Thanks for both, Gimlet Eye.


0

.

Lois Capps, being a DEMONcrat, is obviously and completely wrong!


Since I am a TRUE Christian, I have to follow the lead of my GOP, “God’s Own Party”, of Republicans. Therefore, we cannot in any way impinge upon the wealthy 3 percent of our society with our great tax benefits and offshore tax savings, just to mention a few money laundering schemes that we have and that the middle class doesn’t. Tough!


Even though we have yet to create enough jobs that would bring down the unemployment rate in the last 8 years, of which was the impetus of the “Bush Tax Cuts”, we are still to be left alone money-wise!


Saving the 3 percent wealthy at all costs is one of the main foundations of the Republican Party, along with controlling the woman’s uterus and slamming ungodly gays in many ways! To hell with our promise to create jobs in the 2010 elections! Hahahaha, a Democrat sucker is born every second!


That being said, we need to take more from the middle class citizens in the way of higher college tuition, tax increases on their income, giving them less write off through IRS means, etc. Of course, removing Socialist Medicare for those despising middle class people that had the audacity to live this long to qualify for Medicare in the first place! Notwithstanding, unemployment benefits? Reduced, or gone as well! Let em eat cake!


Aren’t we tired of the same old saw that our Republican alumni, for the most part, started the collapse of the Banking community, Wall Street, upheld deregulation, and set in order the housing collapse? So what if this was started by Bush within his presidency?


Who cares if Republicans have subsequently stopped job bills proposed by the hell-bound Democrats by not even letting them even come up for a vote? Shake if off, it’ builds character! If the middle class can’t sustain life in the most simplest of forms because of these economic conditions that we caused for the most part, then quit your whining and move to Costa Rica!


True Republicans, let us gang together and stop this insidious tax cut that Lois Capps wants to place basically upon the middle-class students. Let us actually raise the students tuition as proposed by our Republican brothers, and in doing so, we’ll cut the wheat from the chaff. In this way, we’re assured that only wealthy Republicans will go to college, therefore assuring that we have our well educated flock in order in the upcoming elections, praise Jesus!


Hey middle class, can’t afford college? Micky D’s is hiring! “Do you want fries with that order, sir?”


0

“everything has been invented….” Remember, we have electric and hydrogen power figured out, even magnetic lift rapid transit, etc. Don’t confuse what has been “invented” with what has or hasn’t been implemented yet. The “stuff” is out there, ready. We don’t need invention, we need implementation.


More memory or quicker processing on your ‘puter, ahhh, so what at this point? That could go on forever, when will be be unimpressed? It’s as much a toy as a tool now. Ex. Why do we text now instead of just talking on the damned things? Because we are playing.

Education has run it’s course, how much more detail is required? I think we’re now just mentally masterbating. As my boyhood buddy who has been a computer science professor forever and truly one of the very few who delivered the tech. at Bezerkely forever says about high end schooling, “You learn more and more about less and less”. Maybe ultimately we’ll know all about nothing, Aren’t we just oohhh-ing and ahhh-ing at impertinent facts at this stage? I’m being somewhat tough on Ed. but it’s only producing indebted, unemployed kids now. Why? Saturation.

Israel? remember, most Jews don’t live there. Israel is controlled from NYC, London and Paris more than Tel Aviv. Israel is a concept, not a country. They have a mighty military, ours. And a powerful government, ours. Bob, if you’re looking for enlightenment in terms of world affairs now and throughout history start by researching Jewish activities, “Wow, just Wow” is an understatement. Look for an explosion of hidden facts as the swamp is drained in the future. Remember, the information age is also the disinformation age. Most Jews know what I’m inferring. The moderator will toss me if I continue on the subject so…. Amazing what mass hypnosis can accomplish. Here’s where your “breakthrough” needs to be, not more tech. I’m half Jewish (Dad) if their is such a thing, so I can’t be anti-semetic back at myself, can I??

“Do you really want ……..wage slave country? ” Remember, they paid they’re dues by working hard for less, now they’re wages are skyrocketing, We can’t afford their “stuff” already. Who owes who here? Who is or will soon be the slave? They get up and go to work in the morning, get paid, save it and own what they have, we get up and try to figure out how to make the payments on stuff we don’t own yet. Thank Wall st. increasing investors “profits” by getting us better “deals” abroad. Yeah, how’s that workin’ for us? Treasonous and disgusting concepts.

As for our elected officials, they know what you know and more, as you said, it’s a game to them, they only monitor the number of constituents who know the real facts. They don’t react to the facts themselves which is what the job is supposed to involve, they react to the amount of folks who have them. They don’t budge until they have to.

Until mankind sees himself in his true position here on this spinning dirtball in the middle of nothingness which is not as an asset but an ass he will continue to stupidly and egotistically stumble into the abyss.

That’s my view.


0

Sorry, this was meant to be a reply to bobfrromsanluis below.


0

T_S_ W_ A_ J


0

Thanks, note they wouldn’t devulge their sources (active spies) only the dead ones (how?)

Wondering what is written about the Liberty incident.

Birdcage liner.

I bet the Publishers fought for the oppurtunity to print it…for free, for obvious reasons.

Why spy on them over there anyway, just send your spooks to D.C. Virginia and NYC.


0

very unfortunate title, the author is the guy who personally sued the college professor leading to investigation Grover Norquist‘s Islamic institute .


0

This would be nice to discuss in a calm, dispassionate manner.

We could come to some fair, common agreeances; except for the fact that Republicans are inescapable and unmitigated assholes.


0

Have I missed something in these comments? I can’t find anything you’ve said that is calm, dispassionate, and leads us to a “fair, common agreeance.” Perhaps your use of “inescapable and unmitigated assholes” is your idea of calm and dispassionate?


0

In specific cases, YES. In many specific cases, being dispassionate means ignoring common courtesy in the case of Republicans.


0

Amazing. Vendetta at it’s very worst.


0

you have just removed yourself from ever being taken seriously, but then maybe you never have been


0

everyone has one.


0

Not more education blather. God, I get tired of the push to sit around in boring classrooms learning yesterdaze stale ideas. Are China and Brazil whizzing past us with their educated masses? Hardly, Brazil has natural resources and cheap labor that are accessible. China is winning by having their masses get their butts outa bed and down to the factory everyday, all day. Period. Higher education holds the promise of not having to get dirty nor having to work hard and for a ton of cash, you know it and I know it. Now we have a country full of “them”, that’s why we had to import what is really required, hard workers getting dirty.

Want to educate our brats on how to have a good life in a healthy country? Expose to them the graft and corruption in Wall st, banking and government. Expose the controlled media. Stop those who would sacrifice America for Israel. And most of all control the blight upon the Earth, the human birthrate.

Everything has been invented that’s required to support humanity, so what’s left besides more splitting of hairs in technology. God, can’t we take a break from technolgy, which is the science of creating problems and then trying to solve them?

Turn these stupid dream factory campuses into real factories and/or housing.

Control the birthrate, expose the worldwide banking scam. Dump Israel. Put on a condom.


America is surviving now by threatening the world with force from our vast military. That will create an equal individual opposing force consisting of those we’ve pressured. Then we will have the required population control required, the hard way.

The “highly” educated, we had enough of them the day we opened our southern border. There, you’re now educated, for free!


0

Wow. Just wow. The interesting thing about your screed is that I do agree with more than just a few of your points; the point you made about education though, IMO, is way off base. Yes, we need to uncover the cronyism/nepotism/favoritism that is how our large corporations/banking/investment firms work hand-glove with our elected representatives. Yes, we do support the hard right wing leadership and ideals of Israel much to our detriment, and the birthrate does desperately need to be reduced.

“Everything has been invented that’s required to support humanity, so what’s left besides more splitting of hairs in technology.” There is a story of a gentleman who was in charge of a major automobile company back in the 1930s who retired because as he put it: “The automobile has reached its pinnacle of design and execution, there is no more room for improvement or new designs.” Or another one attributed to Bill Gates was something about “No one will ever need more than xx megabits of memory” You are as wrong as can be that “everything has been invented ….” ; the point is, we don’t know where the next breakthrough will come, what technology will either save lives, make us more productive or enable us to communicate more effectively or move us from point A to point B more efficiently than ever. “Turn these stupid dream factory campuses into real factories and/or housing.” and “China is winning by having their masses get their butts outa bed and down to the factory everyday, all day. Period.” Do you really want to turn the United States into another wage slave country? Really?

I will also agree that our military is used as a huge “hammer” which in turn makes our view of most “problems” look like a nail that needs to be swacked, regardless of which party is in the White House. The adage about “when the people lead, the leaders will follow” certainly is where we should be going, but as you also stated about the media, it is very “controlled”; most all of the protests before the Iraq invasion were ignored by the corporate media, so we have to express ourselves by having overwhelming numbers that cannot be ignored. Every time you email or call any elected official, be it city council, county supervisor, state assembly/state senate or US congress person, they do make note of it, and the more we let them know what we want them to do, the more likely they will be forced to act how we want them to. There can be no “reaction” (by our elected officials) without an “action” done first; get involved.


0

justme, Austrian economics is just the corrective to set your otherwise interesting comments straight.


Anyway, check this out:


The Cost of Corruption and Abuse


http://www.constitution.org/costcorr.htm


0

Thanks for both sites. And how about the fact it was written 18 yrs ago. Rate of change? Nil. And add at least 2 wars since.


0

Yep. Not all that much has changed with the MIC (Military-Industrial Complex), even since WWI, except that things have gotten worse, while far too many of us think that this state of affairs is normal.


War is the central organizing principle of this civilization.


Make that “perpetual war.”


This is not going to end well.


0

Yeah, It’s really just a controlled collapse.


Bad inflation coming with housing being the ONLY thing not rising.


What’s worse than that besides rioting in the st.


Buckle up and don’t hold dollars.


0

“a controlled collapse,” just like 9/11.


0

Thank you Lois. A well educated America is the least expensive way to help commerce and business that there is. Haven’t the short sighted posting critical of keeping college less expensive and more available noticed that even ExxonMobile is advertising that American students have fallen to 17th place in math and science; asking that we solve that problem.


So yes, let Congress end the subsidies for oil companies and redirect the Billions given away to an industry that openly says it does not need the extra money instead to reducing the cost of student loans.


Lois is right on on this one folks.


0

We’d be in agreement on ending subsidies for oil companies if you stopped right there. Taking that money and spending it on something else isn’t going to get us much of anywhere, except to keep is that much more in debt.


If we truly want to “solve the problem” of being in 17th place, the answers lie in increasing the quality of the science and math education we now provide, not providing a “17th place” education to even more people.


0

Right, but how? By having the government get more deeply involved in education?


“17th place” just means the entire country. That’s a lot of people that you are generalizing about. Sounds like the government monopoly is what is causing this problem, along with these sorts of overgeneralizations.


If individual Americans are going to COMPETE with Asians, or whoever, then they will have to do it by INDIVIDUAL effort, as INDIVIDUALS, not COLLECTIVE effort.


It is only the free market which will facilitate this effort.


And in a free market, we won’t need “federally guaranteed student loans.”


0

Totally agree. Get the feds out of it. Stop sending restricted funds that can only be spent on items of federal priority. Let each district, through it’s locally accountable board, determine its own priorities. If education used to be better, let’s get back to those things that we’ve lost since it was better.


0

Thanks, a very interesting article.


But the professor is as wrong as he can be when he says,


“Universities do not have “business models.” They have complementary missions of teaching, research, and public service. Yet such leaders think of universities as a collection of market transactions, instead of a dynamic (I said it) tapestry of creativity, experimentation, rigorous thought, preservation, recreation, vision, critical debate, contemplative spaces, powerful information sources, invention, and immeasurable human capital.”


Yes, universities DO, or OUGHT, to have business models. Why should a “business model” and teaching, research, public service, and creativity, et al., be mutually exclusive? That’s ridiculous! Any such “barrier” is a figment of somebody’s overworked imagination!


This professor may very well be right that the rich patron of the UVA may have acted unethically.


However, if the UVA were a private university, I seriously doubt that we would now be debating this. A private school can hire and fire as it pleases. It can also move in any direction it wants. It is only because the UVA is a “public” university that we speak of a “mission,” that utopian will o’ the wisp that seems to go with any public enterprise. So private universities don’t have a “mission.” Come on!


The underlying message of this article is that “capitalism” is bad, socialism is good, making a buck is bad, public service is good, etc.


This professor needs to immerse himself in some Libertarian literarture, such as:


Capitalism, Happiness, and Beauty

By Ludwig von Mises


[The following is excerpted from The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, a socio-psychological study of anti-market bias published by D. Van Nostrand (Princeton, N.J., 1956). It has been made available online by special arrangement with the Libertarian Press.]


http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=502


0

von Mises…the Austrian school of economics offshoot that borrowed so much from Adolph .


How CLOWNISH !


0

To quote you: “This would be nice to discuss in a calm, dispassionate manner. We could come to some fair, common agreeances; except for the fact” that all you seem to be interested in is ad hominum attacks on those who are being serious AND respectful of one another.


0

The article is interesting, indeed. Written by a professor who was on the losing side – and it doesn’t provide much in the way of pertinent facts about what happened at UVA. Two things strike me: First, the sentence toward the end, colleges “have complementary missions of teaching, research, and public service.” Translated – college professors aspire to nothing that can be objectively measured and, therefore cannot be held accountable for anything. Second, regardless of the dynamics involved, the president resigned; she was not fired.


Universities are huge businesses, just as large corporations with boards of directors are. There’s a reason presidents and CEOs get the really big bucks – they can be let go at any time for any (or no) reason. Boards typically hire presidents and CEOs to affect change, not to maintain the status quo. If that isn’t working, or isn’t progressing fast enough, the president or CEO leaves.


This article just isn’t compelling.


0

Cicero, I disagree. The best way to “help commerce and business” is for the government to GET OUT OF THE WAY and allow commerce to move forward.


It is not the job of government to “keep college less expensive and more available.” That is what a free market economic system is for, and it is perfectly capable to doing the job IF LEFT ALONE.


Now that the government has thus interfered, we have seen the results, and they are THE OPPOSITE of what you describe. This is prima facie evidence of a failed, misguided policy which must stop.


Lois Capps is the backer of said policy, a course which will only widen and deepen our economic problems unless her kind are stopped.


0
1 2