Those wacky politicians in Washington want to phase out the FFELP. They believe it isn’t needed. Why they don’t think it’s needed is a difficult question to answer.

Just looking at the Stafford subsidized and unsubsidized and the PLUS loans, $39.1 billion in FFELP loans were made in 2004 alone. Those numbers come from America’s Student Loan Providers. They loaned the money so they know how much it is.

I tried to find comparable numbers for the FDLP only to find out the 2006 Congress Budget Oversight Committee admitted to having no idea how much the government has loaned out directly. That’s right. They are basing everything they say about the FDLP on estimates. More importantly, they have no idea how many taxpayer dollars they’ve loaned out. How do they know how much to collect?

I’m just curious because some of it is my money. You should care, too.

Does this mean I can just estimate how much I owe in taxes? No, because the IRS has a database and they will find out how much I owe. So what exactly is the FDLP using to keep track of loans? Do they keep track of it on a giant abacus and one day someone accidentally knocked it over? Are they using the cocktail napkin system? If you are in the business of making loans, how can you not know how much you’ve loaned out? How would you know if you had more money you could loan? How would you know when a loan was paid off?

There’s a lot wrong here and I think most of it is based on one very simple principle: Government isn’t business. I told you it was simple. That’s one reason communism doesn’t work. Imagine if business decided to act like government. See? They aren’t interchangeable.

What I find most troubling is the cavalier attitude towards our future. If they pass the Student Aid Reward Act, Congress is proving it doesn’t care if the FDLP is bad for students or taxpayers. Until they can fix the administration of student loans I don’t want them estimating my future.

We are opposed to the proposed student loan legislation and middle-class families should be too! The government is taking money out of YOUR POCKET.

It only takes one minute to make a difference: call your senators, send your senators an e-mail, download a letter to fax to your senators, become part of our petition and help your friends find out the truth about the proposed student loan legislation.