Why can't Democrats and Republicans agree? Student loan subsidies should be offset by a reduction in other subsidies. Where can we find a quick six billion? End Fossil Fuel Welfare.
Representative John Boehner (OH) is angry. A so-called "War on Women" has been perpetrated by the left to drive women away from the Republican Party. And yet, while he decries this unfair attack, his party proposes to take money out of women's pockets for preventative health, and give it to students for lower rates on college loans. The beauty of this strategy, is that it pulls from one left leaning group and gives to another, while leaving all the right leaning special interests (wealthy, banking, insurance, oil) untouched.
Americans bought into the idea of pay-as-you-go spending in big numbers during the 2010 election cycle, but it seems that the party in power has used this principle, only to club to death all the programs that they deem unimportant (like social security, healthcare, education) while protecting the sacred cows of our emerging plutocracy.
Democrats, for their part, have failed to pick up on this strategy as the latest example demonstrates. Partly because they lack any meaningful power in the House, (not so in the Senate) and partly because they don't want to touch their own sacred cows, the idea of paying for one side's programs out of the hyde of the other's has not gained any traction. They consistently go after millionaires and fat-cat corporate interests at the same time. Whoever said you build a wall one brick at a time never spoke to a Democrat. They just keep shooting for the moon with a bottle rocket. While you might like the millionaire-next-door because he creates jobs in your community, you certainly can't have sympathy for smoke-belching oil refineries and utility monopolies that are making billions. Sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions are literally choking us to death. Yet we drive. We want cheap electricity. We want cheap gas. Democrats have never been good at math, and they unwittingly go along with the right's dogma that we have shouldn't calculate the cost of disease and war in to the price of fuel. We pay alot for energy. Fossil fuel subsidies on oil and coal cost the US Taxpayer anywhere between 4Billion and 41Billion dollars annually, BEFORE you calculate the price of emergency room asthma attacks, cancer treatments and two wars. Emerging technologies like solar, wind and biofuels, (and before that, the space race) are just a red herring for covering up the giveaways to mature, thriving, wealthy corporate giants.
In America, we support new technology and students with temporary subsidies. It's how we grow. Once they become marketable, we're supposed to turn-off the government welfare. Now, that's conservatism we should all agree on.
Democrats: Wake up!! Put forth a bill that pays for student loans by ending fossil fuel welfare.
Now. In the election cycle.