I’ve been struggling to come to grips with the reasons so many politicians are backing the current onslaught of legislation even though it takes away students’ rights. The answer always seems to come back to political motives. In some cases they seem to be supporting the bills so it looks like they are doing something about the current financial aid news and growing unrest towards the high cost of higher education. Nowadays, politicians spend most of their time working on their next campaign or election. Every vote becomes a question of how they can spin it for the voters back home. Even those not running for re-election or looking for a nomination can make decisions based on political needs. Instead of rating a bill on its own merit it becomes a question of who is sponsoring it and what else do they support.

So when a member of Congress decides the FFELP program and subsidized student loans are a bad idea, what kind of logic goes behind that decision?

For some perverse reason, they think an expensive, government heavy program that costs us precious tax dollars every year is better for us than a well-established program that pays for itself. Just try to apply that logic to your every day life. Take everything in your refrigerator and throw it away then go to the store and only buy items you’ve never tried that aren’t on sale. You’ve wasted food, time, and money, but on the upside you might have gained some loyalty points on your supermarket’s customer card. That only makes sense if you have some desperate need for those points – sort of like the politician’s need for votes. You can worry later if you don’t like anything you bought and as long as you have an unlimited supply of time and money you can keep randomly spending. If you think that kind of thinking will help student aid, or anything else, you should change your major to Poli-Sci and think about a H.R. 1010 future in the Senate.

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.