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Obama’s Student Stimulus: Buying Votes

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When I attended college, (and no, kiddies, I did not arrive on horseback) tuition at the then Memphis State University (now the University of Memphis), was a measly couple of hundred bucks per semester. Nowadays, you can buy a brand new deep-breathing SUV for what a semester in college costs.

It follows that there are a lot of unpaid-for student loans floating around out there. In fact, the estimated student loan debt in the U.S. is $1 trillion.

But, have no fear, kiddies. President Barack Hussein Obama is going to kiss your boo-boo and make it not hurt as much.

Correction: Not hurt YOU as much.

Fox News reports:

In keeping with his new campaign theme of “we can’t wait,” President Obama today will roll out a plan to put more money in the pockets of some of the nation’s 36 million student loan recipients.

Obama has broad latitude in this area – certainly broader than the first two parts of his western campaign trip, underwater mortgages and subsidies for hiring veterans – because one of his early legislative initiatives was to have the federal government take over the student lending business in America.

Obama argued for the measure in 2009 as a cost-savings initiative, saying that the old system of privately issued, government secured loans reduced the amount of available money for needy students and also prevented the feds from making the system more efficient.

But Obama is now seeking to use that new power to obtain a taxpayer-financed stimulus that Congress won’t approve. The idea is to cap student loan repayment rates at 10 percent of a debtor’s income that goes above the poverty line, and then limiting the life of a loan to 20 years.

Take this example: If Suzy Creamcheese gets into George Washington University and borrows from the government the requisite $212,000 to obtain an undergraduate degree, her repayment schedule will be based on what she earns. If Suzy opts to heed the president’s call for public service, and takes a job as a city social worker earning $25,000, her payments would be limited to $1,411 a year after the $10,890 of poverty-level income is subtracted from her total exposure.

Twenty years at that rate would have taxpayers recoup only $28,220 of their $212,000 loan to Suzy.

The president will also allow student debtors to refinance and consolidate loans on more favorable terms, further decreasing the payoff for taxpayers.

Obama’s move comes at a moment when many economists are warning of a college debt bubble that is distorting college tuition rates and threatening to further damage credit markets. The president’s move is intended to make college more affordable for more people, which will, in turn allow universities to jack up their rates.

Obama accomplishes three beneficial things (beneficial to him that is) by doing this:

  1. He lines the pockets of his homies, the pin-headed academicians.
  2. He bypasses Congress…you know, that whole System of Checks and Balances Thingy
  3. He pulls off a bribe of gi-normous proportions, hoping for a quid pro quo: I saved you student loan holders a ton of money, now you have to vote for me in 2012.

Obama is trying to recapture the magic of the 2008 election, in which young minds full of mush led the misguided charge to enthrone their messiah.

According to The Tartan, Carnegie Mellon University’s student-run newspaper:

Between 22 and 24 million young Americans ages 18–29 voted, resulting in an estimated youth voter turnout (the percentage of eligible voters who actually cast a vote) of between 49.3 and 54.5 percent, according to an exit poll analysis released Nov. 4 by CIRCLE, a nonpartisan research center at Tufts University. This is an increase of 1 to 6 percentage points over the estimated youth turnout in 2004, and an increase of between 8 and 13 percentage points over the turnout in the 2000 election. The all-time highest youth turnout was 55.4 percent in 1972, the first year that 18-year-olds could vote in a presidential election.

Sixty-six percent of young voters cast their ballot for Barack Obama, the largest-ever showing for a presidential candidate in this age group. Young people preferred Obama to John McCain by a two-to-one ratio, according to a survey of young voters conducted by Declare Yourself, a nonpartisan initiative dedicated to youth voters, and Luntz Maslansky Strategic Research, a market research company, and released Nov. 6.

“Young people absolutely made the difference in this election,” said Erika Johansson, a project coordinator for Declare Yourself. “Without them, he would have lost the election.”

Obama won the age group of 18- to 29-year-olds, in addition to the 30–44 and 45–59 brackets.

According to a National Journal/Heartland Monitor Poll published in June of this year, Obama’s approval ratings among 18 to 29 year olds had fallen 10 points from 2008′s 66%, coming in at 56%.

Even more telling:

Sixteen percent (16%) of Likely U.S. Voters now say the country is heading in the right direction, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey taken the week ending Sunday, October 23.

That’s 16% of Americans.  Therefore, college students were included in the survey.

Something tells me that Obama’s “Student Stimulus” will be just as ineffective as the original.

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