Rep. John Kline, MN-2,
whose student loan bill
addresses the debt problem by
jackingup interest rates.
I rarely offer advice to the Republicans. I have better things to do than play concern-troll. I also believe in the old adage about never interrupting your opponents when they're making a mistake. I'm interrupting a mistake now. At the same time they're screwing themselves over with younger voters, they're screwing over younger voters with
their attempt to jack-up student loan interest rates. Their mistake is great for Democrats, but sucky for people burdened with student loan debt or hoping to advance their educations. Actually, it's bad for all of us, because a less-educated population means a less robust economy overall in the long term, and in the short term, people burdened with large loan payments aren't buying the sort of stuff that might actually generate jobs at a time of high unemployment. What, we should help debtors who aren't us to help unemployed people who also aren't us? Yes. In a wider sense, we'll all be economically better off, even you, Republicans.
I'm fully aware Republicans don't agree with the policy, nor do I expect them to agree that access to higher education is as much a right as elementary or secondary education, regardless of how it helps the individual student or the whole society. If Republicans want to go on thinking education is only for those who can pay for it, I can't stop them, but I can point out something in purely electoral terms:
Republicans, you don't have to agree with me on anything in the prior two paragraphs, but you better accept that a lot of the young voters do agree --- and they're not voting for you. Your first instinct seems to be proclaiming yourselves believers in personal responsibility, which Kline seems to think is defined as paying market interest rates on massive debt, but you're missing something. Our kids grow up being told over and over to stay in school and advance their educations however they have to do it, so they go deep in debt because that's the only way to pay for it. In other words, they're in the situation they're in because they were personally responsible, true in a way of both those who took on debt and those delaying school to avoid debt, and now you want to screw them over by jacking up interest rates. Any guesses why they don't vote GOP?
But that's not the part that should really scare you.
Republicans, I'm guessing, took some glee back in 2004 when Democrats got excited because not only were we looking to win the youth vote heavily, the only age group John Kerry won at all as I recall, but we were looking at record young turnout. Hurrah! And we got record turnout, and ... it didn't matter. Turned out record high turnout just meant young voters came close to other age groups. So if blowing off young voters in any given election seems safe, you're right, except for the part you're missing. According to that report the college Republicans just put out, Republicans have lost young voters every election since 1988. Starting in 2004, the margin has been large. Those 18 to 22-year-olds were last year's 26 to 30-year-olds. 30. About the age people become voters more regularly. And you're still losing them. Might not matter if 2004 was a one-off, but it's been the same story every election since.
Forget looking forward, and look back a moment. I had the depressing experience of watching Republicans win with my group of young voters voting Republican, while the Democratic base of Depression Generation voters was dying off. Democrats evidently figured out how to fix their problem. You seem in denial about yours. You won some elections on generational change. How many do you want to lose?
I anticipate a counter-argument that young voters will still vote Democratic even if Republicans keep interest rates low. True, but that argument can be made about any issue; gay rights, voting rights, whatever. Start somewhere, and since you're just not ready for gays to be equal or young voters to be allowed to vote, this might be the easy one for you.
I hear the argument that the House plan is the same as Obama's, but it's not, if you care to check a comparison of different plans. Try not to be shocked that I prefer Sen. Elizabeth Warren's plan, which sets the rate at which the government lends to students at the same rate it lends to banks, which is nearly nothing. If it were purely up to me, higher education would be free for the student like elementary and secondary. We'd end up with a more educated population, which would be good or all of us. Still, we start from where we are, and where we are is tuition is high and grants are low, and we're forcing anyone seeking higher education, who isn't already wealthy, to either skip education or go deep into debt, and now John Kline and the other House Republicans want to make it worse.
If Republicans want to say Democrats have the same problem with people who won't vote for them because of certain issues, that's true. I've run into people who say they would be open to voting Democratic, but we're wrong on some issue of paramount importance to them. If it sounds like I'm telling you to change your position just to pick up votes while, as a Democrat, I refuse to do that, you might be right. Does my concession of that point solve your problem? No.
So Republicans are free to keep trying to persuade people who live with parents because unemployment is particularly high among younger workers, or because wages are so low that many can't simultaneously pay rent and loan payments, that the this is somehow good for them. Try to persuade them raising interest rates is good for them. Try telling them that Kline's bill won't raise rates quite as high as the doubling that happens in July under current law (maybe don't mention that Kline's bill raises student loan interest rates even higher than double if the market rate goes up a few points, which at some point they will).
And I suppose trying to stop younger voters from voting remains an option. Not necessarily a legal option, and it gives Democrats yet another issue for winning younger voters, but it's an option.
Yet let me see if I can be really succinct about this. You can either rethink the policy problem in way that makes circumstances better for people wanting to advance their education or deep in debt from having done so, or you can keep losing younger voters election after election, and paying a big price as they reach the age where they vote regularly. You've won elections with just older voters, and you'll win elections with just older voters, but not as many as you would have won had you not alienated multiple elections' worth of young voters, with your returns diminishing as older voters die off.
My preference is that you do the right thing on the policy for whatever reason you come up with. If you don't, Democrats will be forced to take second-best, which means we will get to keep making an issue out of it and winning younger voters, making "Democratic" their default vote every election for the rest of their lives. Up to you.