President Obama's Student Loan Rate Proposal Saves Average Borrower 25¢ Per Day

    Reprising the Don't Double My Rate theme used during the 2012 presidential campaign, the White House is pushing a plan by President Obama this week to prevent interest rates on some student loans from doubling effective July 1.  However, the savings for most borrowers is rather less significant than might appear at first glance.  The White House uses the example of an incoming freshman who will save $4,000 under the president's plan:

If Congress fails to act, college will be further out of reach for millions of students and families.  In fact, an incoming freshman who borrows $27,000 over the next four years -- a typical debt incurred by today’s college graduates – is projected to pay over $4,000 dollars more over the life of their loans without the President’s proposal.

    However, the chart included with the plan shows that the average savings for student loan borrowers is actually $1,126.  Despite tweets from the White House that seem to suggest the savings are annual ("Last year, President Obama helped students save an average of $1,000 on their college loans"), the footnote to the chart explains that the savings assumes the borrower "repays the loans over the expected period of 12 years."  A savings of $1,126 over twelve years is $94 per year, or about 25¢ a day.


Note: This article first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

Note: Here's a post from last year's Don't Double My Rate campaign when the Obama administration used the same playbook, and Congress eventually signed on.

Student Loans and Sequestration: More Devastation?

    The White House has been trumpeting the devastating effects of sequestration for weeks.  Everything from the military to Head Start to White House tours have been cited as victims.  However, some effects are less than disastrous.  For instance, student loans.  Here's a sample letter to prospective recipients of direct student loans from the Department of Education:

Dear <first name of borrower>:

Our records indicate that you either recently received or are scheduled to receive a Direct Loan from the U.S. Department of Education to help meet your educational expenses.  We want to bring to your attention some recent changes in the law that will affect your Direct Subsidized and/or Direct Unsubsidized Loan.  

On August 2, 2011, Congress passed the Budget Control Act of 2011, which put into place automatic federal budget cuts, known as the “sequester.”  While this law does not otherwise change the amount or terms or conditions of your Direct Loan, it does increase loan fees on Direct Subsidized and Direct Unsubsidized Loans first disbursed after March 1, 2013.  Specifically, the fee on your loan will increase from 1.0 percent of your loan amount to 1.051 percent.  For example, the fee on a $5,500 loan will increase by $2.80 from $55.00 to $57.80. 

If you accept the loan that has been or will be disbursed for you, you will be agreeing to this higher fee and there is nothing you need to do at this time.  However, if you wish to cancel or reduce your loan, you may do so by contacting your school’s financial aid office.  Requests for cancellation should be made as soon as possible.  If you have additional questions about your loan, please do not hesitate to contact your school’s financial aid office. 

We wish you good luck in your educational pursuits.

    While $2.80 might not seem like much, the Obama administration made quite a big deal back in the summer of 2012 over saving student loan recipients 25¢ a day, so perhaps the president can spin this as yet another tragic result of the heartless intransigence of Congress.

You Can't Handle the Truth... Team!

    Earlier this week, I wrote about the Obama campaign's magical reduction in the cost of higher education via a revision to their new Student Loan Reform page on their website.   Paul Bedard at the Washington Examiner, Scott Johnson at Powerline, and Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit all picked up the story.  However, the Obama Truth Team didn't get the memo.  As of this morning, their August 21st blog post on the subject still looks like this:

This of course is how the graphic looks now on the Student Loan page:

While I recognize the more significant changes are the cuts in "Expected Income" and "Expected Student Loan Debt", my personal favorite is still "My child wants to go to an expensive college."

    So how long will it take the Obama Truth Team's fact checkers to catch up with Julia's (it must be her, right?) reduced expectations?  I'll keep my eyes peeled.

"Shop Around?" Puh-lease!

   Recently, a college student asked Mitt Romney for advice on paying for college.  Romney told the young man that the best advice he could give him was to "shop around, get a good price" for a college he could afford.  The Obama campaign immediately pounced on the comment, along with "borrow money from your parents" as evidence Romney is out of touch.  The Student Loan reform page on the Obama website contrasts Romney's words with the president's declaration that “Higher education cannot be a luxury reserved for the privileged few. It is an economic necessity.”  The Democratic National Committee has even produced an web video ad called "Shop Around" mocking Romney for the advice:



    However, Romney is not the first politician to use the phrase "shop around" when discussing an area of policy affecting the American people.  Consider these words on...

 Housing: Third, there's going to be more competition so that consumers can shop around for the best rates.  Right now, some underwater homeowners have no choice but to refinance with their original lender -- and some lenders, frankly, just refuse to refinance.  So these changes are going to encourage other lenders to compete for that business by offering better terms and rates, and eligible homeowners are going to be able to shop around for the best rates and the best terms.

Medical Care:  I also think that we should -- hospitals should publish the cost of their basic procedures, what's an appendectomy or a colonoscopy or whatnot, to enable consumers to shop around, where's the best price.  We all know that there's a wide disparity in what hospitals charge for the same procedures.  I think the disinfectant of sunshine helps -- it helps consumers, it helps our people.

Health Insurance:  And you'll eventually see lower costs. And, if you lose your insurance for some reason or you're underinsured or you work for a small business that can't afford to provide you health insurance, you can shop around for a plan on the Insurance Exchange, which will have many, many options, many affordable options, and that's a choice that you absolutely don't have today. So you will have many more choices, not fewer choices. 

So who are these radicals, these out-of-touch elites who don't understand that competition chews up and spits out regular Americans?  Who are these people suggesting that top-of-the-line housing, medical care, and health insurance apparently are "luxuries reserved for the privileged few"?  How about, in order, Barack Obama, Democratic Senator Max Baucus, and Linda Douglass of the White House Office of Health Reform.

    Granted, in each case, these statements are accompanied by explanations of why government must be heavily involved in housing, medical care, and health insurance to ensure fair competition and affordability.  But when it comes to higher education, not only must the government be heavily involved (you can't expect the students themselves or their families to handle it, after all,) but price is no object.  As I wrote about earlier this week, even the Obama campaign seemed to realize perhaps they overdid it on their endorsement of educational extravagance.  But apparently in this case, they were unable to contain their disgust for that Walmartian-sounding advice "shop around."  Puh-lease.

The Great Student Loan Giveaway

    The last time President Obama talked about saving money for student loan recipients, it turned out to be a windfall of 25¢ a day.  This time around, eleven weeks from the election, the president is talking some real money.  Tuesday morning, this tweet went out from @BarackObama:

The link is to a new page set up by the Obama campaign to explain the president's Pay As You Earn proposal.  (I noted this page already in a post that was picked up by Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner.) The main feature of the plan is that it "caps monthly federal student loan repayment at 10% of monthly discretionary income[.]"  Here is one of the examples provided by the Obama campaign:

A savings of $8,841 per year certainly sounds good. But as it turns out, that's not the half of it.  This savings of $8,841/year translates into $737/month.  This means that without Obama's plan, this doctor's monthly student loan payment would be $737 + $644 = $1,381.  We can check this using the handy calculator also provided on the site (click to enlarge):

Working backwards, a $120,000 loan with a "standard 10-year payment" of $1,381 per month reveals an assumed interest rate of about 6.75% (apparently this is not based on the halved Stafford student loan rate that garnered so much attention two months ago.)  And what is the monthly interest at 6.75% on $120,000?  $675.  That's right.  The doctor earning $100,000 per year does not even have to cover the monthly interest on his debt.  Based on this payment, the debt will literally never be paid off.  (Yes, the doctor's income is likely to increase, but he could also lose his job.)  After 20 years, the balance on the loan will have actually increased to $135,667.  [Even using the artificially reduced, below-market Stafford interest rate of 3.4%, the doctor would still owe $15,712 after 20 years.] However, not to worry!  Another key feature, oddly missing from this website but included in the White House's explanation of the proposal, is that it "will forgive the balance of their debt after 20 years of payments."  I told you the Obama administration was talking real money this time.
    This example is not isolated.  If we run the same scenario with the teacher example provided, the $15,000 debt will have grown to an astounding $34,900 after 20 years. [With the reduced Stafford loan rate, the debt would still be $14,142.]  And what about the single college student who takes the president's advice and rejects Mitt Romney's advice to "shop around" for a college education he can afford?  Say our composite student goes all out and maxes out student loans at $150,000 and it pays off.  He lands a $100,000/year job:

While earning $100,000 per year, our single graduate only has to pay $8,328/year in student loan payments.  After 20 years of this, his debt of $225,683 can be forgiven by the government.

    One of the ironies of this plan is that while touting it, Obama often notes that he and his wife only paid off their loans 8 years ago, almost 20 years after leaving college.  Yet this plan gives no incentive to ever pay off the loan, much less do it before 20 years is up.  And for all the talk about "making education more affordable," this plan has the perverse effect of giving no one any incentive to reduce the cost of college.  The students do not have to worry because their payments are capped.  And the colleges do not have to lower costs to compete for students because the students do not have not worry about the cost.

    But the greatest irony of all might be this tweet from the Obama campaign:

"Reduce the deficit."  A plan that could turn out to be the largest debt forgiveness plan in history will "reduce the deficit."  The deception is audacious and staggering.  The CBO recently reported that the current fiscal year will see the fourth year in a row of one-trillion-plus federal deficits.  If this plan goes through, we may look back at one-trillion deficits with nostalgia.

"Expensive College"? Who Said Anything About "Expensive"?

    While working on an analysis of the Obama campaign's new webpage devoted to President Obama's student loan Pay As You Earn plan, I noticed a telling revision from Tuesday morning to Tuesday night.  The first graphic below is the current version being used by the Obama campaign.  The second is a screen shot of the original graphic used:

Current version

Original version

    I guess it occurred to someone that "My Child wants to go to an expensive college" sounded just a tad snooty?   Mocking Mitt Romney for the responsible advice of "borrow money from your parents" or just "shop around" for a college education you can afford is one thing.  A perky "Yes, I can afford an expensive college because of Barack Obama!" is quite another.

    Note also that the expected income dropped from $50,000 to $45,000.  I guess $50,000 in the current Obama job market was a bit of a laugher since according to CNN, "Members of the Class of 2012 are being offered median starting salaries of $42,569."  Sometimes even a president campaign built on fairy tales ("Life of Julia") collides with reality.

Update:  Here's a screenshot of the original Google cache version since the Google cache has been updated and the original is no longer available.

Update 2: The Obama Truth Team still has the original graphic posted.  I posted this too.

Note: Here's a link to the post on student loans I was originally working on when I discovered the Obama website revision.

Is Insourcing a Luxury?

    A recent DrudgeReport headline screamed:

OUTSOURCED IN SPACE: NASA ASTRONAUT ON RUSSIAN ROCKET

The headline linked to an Investors Business Daily website story about NASA's next astronaut heading into space:

Now, here's some real Obama outsourcing. 

This morning, Kazakhstan time, the next mission to the International Space Station successfully blasted off carrying the usual trio -- a Russian commander, an astronaut from the international community and an American in a seat rented by NASA since the retirement of the last U.S. space shuttle a year ago this month.

Given the Obama administration's recent criticism of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital as serial outsourcers, this story has more than a touch of irony.  However, the irony is sharpened by an Obama comment I unearthed recently during the student loan interest "Don'tDoubleMyRate" debate.  The president had stated that "Higher education cannot be a luxury reserved for the privileged few."  So I looked back at some other non-luxuries from past Obama statements and found this:

"And so, as President, I believe that space exploration is not a luxury, it’s not an afterthought in America’s quest for a brighter future -- it is an essential part of that quest."

So essential, in fact, that we must outsource the transportation for our space exploration to Russia?  Sort of like the Canadian-made bus that the Obama campaign got for the president?  I guess some luxuries are more luxurious than others.

President Obama: Let Me Be Unclear [Updated]

    On July 9th, President Obama gave a speech touting his administration's record on taxes, especially for the middle class.  The speech appears to be part of laying the groundwork for his push to allow the "Bush tax cuts for the wealthy," as they are commonly known, to expire at the end of 2012.  In his speech, he made the following claim (via RealClearPolitics):

That’s why I’ve cut middle-class taxes every year that I’ve been President -- by $3,600 for the typical middle-class family. Let me repeat: Since I’ve been in office, we’ve cut taxes for the typical middle-class family by $3,600.

The president's campaign liked this line so much they tweeted it out later that day:

President Obama: "I’ve cut taxes every year that I've been President by $3,600 for the typical middle-class family.”

Pretty soon, Twitter was alive with incredulity at the president's claim, as Twitchy documented:

Oh, dear. President Obama is not too good at those “teachable moment” things, is he? Earlier this month, Twitters tried to teach the president a little lesson about putting “FACT” in front of his absurd statements, as if that would make them true. Looks like The One didn’t heed that advice, because he is at it again.

Some of the responses were: "First define 'fact', 'typical', and 'American'"; "Not in my typical home!"; and "Baloney, you sure didn't cut my taxes. In fact you've drastically increased them with the ObamaTax."  But the rush to heap scorn on the president for his tax-cutting claim, Twitchy and the tweeters missed the larger deception.  There will always be debate about what constitutes a "tax cut" and what exactly is the "typical family," but the president was citing figures from a April 2012 White House document called "Keeping America's Women Moving Forward." This passage appears on page 9:

Tax Incentives for Middle Class Families: 2009 – 2012 

A typical family making $50,000 a year has seen their taxes cut by $3,600 during President Obama’s first term in office...

In 2009, as part of the Recovery Act, the President signed the Making Work Pay tax cut of up to $800 for a family (and $400 for a single individual) in 2009 and 2010. A typical working family making $50,000 per year would have gotten $1,600 in relief from this law over those two years.  

At the end of 2010, the President signed a 2% payroll tax cut for 160 million working Americans and their families, which provided $1,000 in tax relief for a typical family during 2011. At the end of 2011, President Obama stood firm against the opposition of Republicans in Congress and ensured that the payroll tax cut was extended into 2012, and then for the entire year – providing an extra $40 per paycheck for a typical working family this year...

Now that we've looked at the source of the claim, look at the president's statement again:

President Obama: "I’ve cut taxes every year that I've been President by $3,600 for the typical middle-class family.” [emphasis added]

Cut taxes every year by $3,600 for the typical middle-class family? Wow!  That's quite a savings!  Oh, but wait.  Look at the White House documentation again.  "$1,600 in relief from this law over those two years" and "$1,000 in tax relief for a typical family during 2011" and "the payroll tax cut was extended into 2012."  This is not $3,600/year.  They are adding $1,600, $1,000, and $1,000.  This is $3,600 over FOUR years, or $900/year.  President Obama exaggerated by a factor of four.  This is reminiscent of his recent "hyperbole" over student loan interest savings.  Perhaps this explains the more recent "evolution" in the statement that the campaign put out later on Twitter:

FACT: The typical middle-class family's taxes have been cut by $3,600 over President Obama's first term.

Notice the "every year" part has been quietly dropped.  Is this a case of the president's campaign fact-checking their own candidate?  Or is it a case of a deliberately misleading statement that will reach the largest audience followed by "clarification" that can provide deniability later on.  Call me a skeptic, but I tend to believe the latter.

UPDATE:  The president has doubled down on the original deception.  The Barack Obama campaign Twitter account tweeted this from the president's speech in Ohio today:

Since when has "tax burden" ever meant anything other than annual?  This is an in-your-face falsehood that the president is daring someone to call him out on.  Let's see if anyone in the media steps up.

UPDATE:  Well, Ed Morrissey of Hot Air stepped up and chose this post as his "Obamateurism of the Day," for which I am grateful.  That will greatly increase the chance that more people will be aware of the president's (as Ed Morrissey generously puts it) "confusing" statement.  But will it lead to a true Obama campaign clarification?

Affording Something? Now That is a Luxury!

    Now that Congress and the White House have protected student loan recipients from the catastrophic 25¢ per day increase that was scheduled to hit July 1st, the president has perhaps realized that this savings might not quite be enough to bring college within the grasp of all Americans.  Although it is unclear what new initiatives the president has in mind, he wasted no time in drawing a clear distinction between his views on paying for higher education and those of Mitt Romney:

As HotAir likes to say from time to time, it's come to this: A candidate for president of the United States of America can be derided for opining that students should "get as much education as they can afford."  I am sure that Mitt Romney provided some context for this statement of his, but frankly, I didn't even look it up because what in the world is wrong with saying it even OUT of context?  Is "affording" something no longer a legitimate criterion?  Coming from a president who will have run four consecutive $1 trillion budget deficits, the answer is obviously no.

    But what of the president's statement: "Higher education cannot be a luxury reserved for the privileged few"?  What else does President Obama consider "not a luxury"?

• Space exploration - "And so, as President, I believe that space exploration is not a luxury, it’s not an afterthought in America’s quest for a brighter future -- it is an essential part of that quest."
• Workplace flexibility - "We must change our workplaces to meet the demands of a changing working environment as workplace flexibility is not a luxury, but a competitive imperative."
• Health care reform - "In 2009, health care reform is not a luxury. It's a necessity we cannot defer."
• And, of course, higher education - "Higher education cannot be a luxury.  Whether it’s a two-year program at a community college or a four-year program or a post-doctorate program, it is not a luxury.  It is an economic imperative."

What else will soon become "not a luxury"?  A house?  Surely a car is not a luxury - especially if it's electric.  Cell phone? Oops, sorry, I'm behind the times on that one.  We've come a long way from Benjamin Franklin's "a penny saved is a penny earned."  The question is, can we find our way back?

Safe Quarters

    One of my first blog posts to garner attention was "Nickel and Diming" (thanks to Powerline, who listed it as a "Pick" back in January - it's still #3 on my popular posts list.)  That post was a commentary on how the administration made such a huge deal out of cutting the federal deficit by $3 billion, the equivalent of the average American family cutting out one Starbucks latte per year.  Well, they are at it again with a twist, and this time, the Republicans are helping them out.  But this time, it's not the government saving pocket change.  It's student loan recipients.
    The administration has been harping on the Stafford student loan interest rate increase that was due to take effect July 1st.  They have encouraged students and others, via the campaign blog and Twitter, to tell Congress "don't double my rate."  Well, Congress obliged and Friday, legislation was passed to hold the rate at 3.4% instead of 6.8%.  But as I wrote on the 24th, this rate cut (if it is renewed in perpetuity, a likely scenario) will save the average Stafford student loan recipient a whopping 25¢ a day.  So all you students who needed that extra 15 minutes a day on the parking meter, you can breathe easy.  The federal government is looking out for you.

Hyperbole on Steroids

    The president ramped up his efforts again this week to get Congress to prevent an interest rate increase on Stafford students loans set to occur on July 1st.  He also ramped up his deceptive rhetoric, as the White House blog records:

"If Congress does not get this done in a week, the average student with federal student loans will rack up an additional $1,000 in debt over the coming year," he said. "If Congress fails to act, more than 7 million students will suddenly be hit with the equivalent of a $1,000 tax hike. And that’s not something that you can afford right now."

The reality is that a rate increase would mean an additional $1,041 in interest over the 12-year life of the loan, not "over the coming year."  But Politico chose to report this whopper as follows:

That was a bit of hyperbole. According to the Department of Education, if rates double, the borrower paying back the average Stafford loan would owe an additional $1,041 over the 12-year life of the loan. That would break down to $87 more annually, or about $7 more a month.

"A bit of hyperbole"?  A $7 per month interest increase morphs into a annual "$1,000 tax hike", and that's "a bit of hyperbole"?  For crying out loud, it's 25¢ per day!  What's next?  Operation Fast and Furious is a "big fuss over a few guns"?  Four years of one-trillion-dollar-plus deficits is "austerity"?  With its recent fund raising appeals, this administration has already set its sights on rendering parody moot.  Now it's gunning for hyperbole, as well.  Why the Republicans are negotiating with the president about this issue and not ridiculing the whole matter from the rooftops is beyond me.

The Tiffany Generation (A Real-life Julia) [updated]

    President Obama has kicked off his 2012 campaign in earnest and is looking to rebuild the coalition that brought him victory in 2008.  The youth/student vote has been among the first to be courted by the President, sweet-talked with promises of student loan debt relief.  This week, the Obama campaign posted the following on President Obama's Twitter account from one of the objects of the campaign's overtures:

What heroic act had the President performed that elicited such an effusive response?  The source is the campaign's Letter of the Week which is posted on the blog at the campaign website.  It's a letter from Tiffany in Montana who wrote to tell of her dire plight and how the President saved her:

I am in the final weeks of earning my MBA from the University of Montana. When I went back to school two years ago, I had $30,000 in student loans...  In order to fund my graduate school tuition, I had to take out an additional $20,000 in student loans...  I am a single mom to a 6-year-old son...  Over the past few months, I was beginning to dread finishing school because I had absolutely no idea how I was going to repay my loans at over $500 a month. These payments would have made things so absolutely tight for us that I didn't know how we were going to live from month to month. 

So how did Tiffany find herself in this dilemma?  Here's the full opening paragraph from her letter  [emphasis added]:

I am in the final weeks of earning my MBA from the University of Montana. When I went back to school two years ago, I had $30,000 in student loans. At the time, my employer was reimbursing me for my tuition in graduate school—however, another job opportunity came up and I could not pass it up. My new position is with a nonprofit organization and therefore the option of tuition reimbursement is not available (understandably). In order to fund my graduate school tuition, I had to take out an additional $20,000 in student loans.

Tiffany & Co.

At least $20,000 of Tiffany's debt is due to the fact that she left a job that was paying her tuition to take another job that she could "not pass... up."  Tiffany states in her letter "I love my new job," but perhaps in retrospect, the additional $20,000 in debt might have given the MBA student second thoughts.  But not to worry.  Tiffany learned that President Obama had ridden to the rescue with an Executive Order: "The new “Pay As You Earn” proposal will allow about 1.6 million students the ability to cap their loan payments at 10 percent [of their discretionary income] starting next year, and the plan will forgive the balance of their debt after 20 years of payments."  These changes were slated to take place in 2014 anyway (current levels are 15% and 25 years,) but the President accelerated the timetable by two years.  So what does this mean for Tiffany?

[I]t looks as if my payments are only going to be $175 a month. The substantial savings will make it possible for me to buy a house and for us to live like a normal, middle-class American family!

To recap: Tiffany left a job that was paying her tuition to take another job which could not offer that benefit.  This led to an increase of two-thirds in her student debt.  She then began to "dread finishing school" because the looming $500+ per month payments were going to make "things so absolutely tight for [her] that [she] didn't know how [she and her 6 year old] were going to live from month to month."  Now, after a $325/month reduction in her payment, she has had "a huge weight lifted off [her] shoulders" and will even be able to "buy a house"!    And she "owe[s] it all to President Obama."  Miraculously, as we learn from the White House press release, the changes in the student loan program "carry no additional cost to taxpayers."  No wonder Tiffany can barely contain her adulation.  She makes it clear she's ready to go steady with Obama-Biden 2012: "I can tell you right now that there has never been any doubt as to who I will be voting for in November: Obama-Biden 2012 all the way!"
    The government-as-savior tone of the letter is disturbing enough, but that the campaign chose this as the Letter of the Week speaks volumes.  This Pollyanna form of governance has gained such wide appeal that the lack of personal responsibility and the dependence on public largess reflected in Tiffany's letter is unabashedly trumpeted as an American success story.  If the Obama campaign is successful, more and more young Americans will follow Tiffany's lead and give their hearts (and votes) to the President and his vision for America.  Letter of the Week? Sadly, it might be the Letter of a Generation.

Note:  An earlier version of this post misidentified the source of Tiffany's letter as the White House website rather than the Obama 2012 campaign website.

Responsibility Bites

    The latest push by the Obama administration to pander to a segment of the electorate involves the youth vote and student loans.  The White House expresses great concern that graduating students should not be saddled with so much debt upon leaving college: "In 2010, graduates who took out loans left college owing an average of more than $25,000."  The press release goes on to note:

On July 1, 2012, the interest rates on subsidized Stafford student loans are slated to double from 3.4% to 6.8%. To out-educate our global competitors and make college more affordable, Congress needs to stop the interest rate on these student loans from doubling.
If Congress doesn’t act before July 1, 2012, interest rates on loans for over 7.4 million students will double. And for each year that Congress doesn’t act, students rack up an additional $1,000 in debt over the life of their loans.

Meanwhile, CNN reports the numbers somewhat differently:

If Congress does nothing, the cost to students borrowing the maximum $23,000 in subsidized loans is an extra $5,000 over a 10-year repayment period. The cost to the federal government to extend the lower interest rate is $5.8 billion, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

So what's the big deal?  Heck, one year of the Buffett Rule would almost cover the $5.8 billion price tag.  Well, CNN also notes that "a big reason why House Republicans aren't inclined to go along with extending the rate" is that according to a Pew Research Center analysis, a college degree can mean an extra $650,000 over a 40-year career.  That extra $5,000 would be taken care of in 16 weeks.  Not much to ask over 40 years.
    On Tuesday, President Obama addressed some students in North Carolina.  According to Charlie Spiering at the Washington Examiner, he told them...

...that it was time for them "to be responsible" by "thinking bigger" than just themselves.
"We're here only because somebody somewhere felt responsibility not just for themselves, but they felt responsibility for something else," said Obama, reminding the students that their parents and grandparents ... made sacrifices for them.

So what exactly should these students be responsible for?  You would think at the very least their own debts at market interest rates.  The president seems to think this is too much to ask, even going so far as to urge a national whine-in on Twitter to tell Congress "#Don'tDoubleMyRate."
    The reality of what these young people will be responsible for whether they like it or not can be found at the Senate's Committee on the Budget website.  The Lifetime Share of the National Debt calculator reveals that the current lifetime share of the national debt for a 22-year old is $681,086.  There goes that extra $650,000 that the college degree earned.  And for what?  A chance to enter the 1%, or at least the middle class, that will bear an every increasing burden of paying the national debt?  The ultimate irony is that while the President is "reminding the students that their parents and grandparents made sacrifices for them," his fiscal recklessness is saddling those students, their children, and grandchildren with financial "sacrifices" the likes of which this country has never known.  Responsibility is a lesson best taught by example, and the President has shown himself not up to the task.

Originally published at Blogger News Network