The so-called Sunshine Amendment deserves a little “sunshine” of it’s own. The Sunshine Amendment prohibits lenders from offering inducements to secure student loan applications. If you accept the premise that the Sunshine Amendment is good, then you’ll quickly find that the STAR Amendment runs afoul of it. Why? The STAR Amendment offers colleges and universities inducements to steer student loan applicants into the Federal program.

Yes, indeed. The STAR Amendment violates the terms of the Sunshine Amendment. The STAR Amendment mandates exactly what the Sunshine Amendment prohibits. Talk about two-faced. Congressional Democrats are running around like Keystone Cops trying to get something (anything!) done, and the best thing they can come up with are two amendments that would make the Mad Hatter proud!

If the law prohibits FFELP lenders from offering inducements to colleges and universities, parents and borrowers, the FDLP should operate under the same restrictions. Fair is fair, right? Apparently for the Congressional Democrats, “fair” means different things, depending upon whom you’re talking about. If you’re talking about FFELP lenders, offering incentives to students, parents, universities and colleges to participate in your programs is “unfair.” If you’re the FDLP, then those kinds of inducements are not just “fair”, they’re required by law.

And just in case the whole fair/unfair thing isn’t stacked well enough to favor the FDLP, the legislation also mandates that schools participate in the FDLP. Somehow, it is “fair” to restrict students, parents and institutions to dealing with one lender: the Federal government. This program will trap all student loan borrowers. You won’t have a choice. No lenders will compete for your business because that kind of competition would be “unfair.” The law will prevent lenders from rewarding their customers with “inducements” like interest rate reductions for on-time payments, electronic payments and automatic payments, because those would be “unfair.”

Apparently, the Federal government doesn’t have to play by the same rules it wants to impose on private lenders. Instead, Congressional Democrats want to force people to use their broken, insolvent program, and if it means they have to take away your right to choose among lenders, then that’s exactly what they’ll do.

Tell your representatives in Congress that “fair IS fair.” You want a level playing field and you want choice in lending. Once this program is gone, it will be too late to complain. Speak now, because this is what you’ll be stuck with if you don’t.

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Tell your friends the truth about the proposed student loan legislation