All of you college students and graduates out there still paying off your student loans who say “I’m just not that motivated to vote in 2014” — well, here’s your motivation. Get mad, and get even by voting these bums out of office! Senate Tea-Publicans today filibustered Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s bill to allow student loan holders to refinance their student loans at a lower interest rate. In a real democracy, the bill actually passed the Senate with 57 votes.
Steve Benen reports, Senate GOP blocks student-loan refinancing:
President Obama this week issued an executive order to help millions of young people with student-loan payments, lowering payments based on income and loan duration. The program already existed, but the new White House policy greatly expanded eligibility.
But while making the announcement on this on Monday, Obama also endorsed the next logical step: approval of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) proposal to make it easier for students to refinance their loans.
This morning, Senate Republicans blocked the chamber from voting on the idea.
Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked legislation aimed at letting people refinance their student loans at lower rates, a pre-ordained outcome that gave Democrats a fresh election-year talking point against the GOP.
The 56-38 vote fell short of the 60 that would have been needed to advance to debate on the measure by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. Her bill would have let millions of borrowers, some with years-old debt and interest rates topping 7 percent or more, refinance at today’s lower rates.
The bill would have been paid for with the so-called Buffett Rule, which sets minimum tax rates for people making over $1 million.
The final roll call is here. Note that the vote to break the Republican filibuster technically ended up with 56 votes, but it had 57 before Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had to switch his vote for procedural reasons. What’s more, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) missed this morning’s vote, but supports the legislation.
I mention these details because the proposal would really only need two more Republican votes to break the filibuster and allow the Senate to advance the bill. But that support apparently won’t materialize. Warren’s bill picked up a total of three GOP votes this morning — Collins, Corker, and Murkowski — but it needed five. (Zero Democrats voted against it.)
And that’s a shame because this is a good idea that would help a lot of people.
Last year, GOP senators filibustered student interest rate relief before acquiescing to a compromise bill at the 11th hour. That legislation prevented interest rates on new federal loans from doubling to 6.8 percent. But the law didn’t do anything to help the 40 million Americans swimming in existing student loan debt, some of whom are paying back loans with rates of up to 10 percent. Warren’s bill … would reduce most of these Americans’ federal student loan interest rates to the current rate on new undergraduate loans: 3.86 percent.
That would, of course, cost a fair amount of money, which Warren’s bill would finance through the “Buffett Rule” measure. Republicans, as expected, condemned the tax provision, though Senate Democrats said they were open to alternative financing.
The only way you can stop the insanity is to vote these Tea-Publicans out of office.
The Wall St. banks are supplied with capital from the Federal Reserve banks at .25%. They then issue loans to students that are guaranteed by the Federal Government and also subsidized by the Federal Government for a certain period of time at a rate of 8-10% while under Federal subsidy then sky rocket the interest rate after the student’s graduation and they no longer qualify for the student loan guarantee program. The greed is breathtaking the way these banks use Republican Senators to protect this very sweet arrangement. John McCain howls in the interests of these banksters and millionaires who will have the “Buffet rule” levied against them. He believes that their interests trump that of struggling students, primarily younger Americans who are trying to get a foothold on careers they sacrificed dearly to achieve. The people of Arizona should be ashamed that they have repeatedly returned such a person to Congress and that the other member of the pair, Jeff Flake votes right along with him for the same interests.