There has been lots of coverage about the new “reforms” Congress has passed regarding student loan lending. Despite evidence that suggests the government is not the best entity to manage such a program, that taxpayers will not save any money and in fact, may end up spending a lot more, and that the new plan holds little, if any, benefit for most student loan borrowers, Congress is determined to prove to the nation that it has the ability to get something done. Sadly, instead of doing something useful, this reform is where the Congressional Democrats have planted their flag.

The issue of loan consolidation keeps coming up. It’s a big one, since the Senate plan allows loan consolidation only under an extremely limited set of circumstances. For the most part, student loan borrowers will no longer be able to consolidate loans. Combined with the fact that the Federal government may force student loan borrowers to use as many as three different borrowers for a four-year degree, the loss of loan consolidation is a major blow.

Naturally, it gets worse. Some lenders use offshore loan servicing companies to provide customer service support for their loans. When you call the 800- number, your lender will route your call to a call center in India, Southeast Asia, or Eastern Europe where operators read from prepared scripts to deliver customer service. Under the new system, the borrower has no ability to consolidate loans, meaning that you can no longer vote with your feet when your lender turns out to be a dud. You’re stuck with that lender until you pay off your loan.

Just think about it: under the new program, you could get stuck with two or three dud lenders, and the great lender that your brother, sister or friend had when they were in college is no longer even part of the program. Offshore loan servicing, poor customer service and no mechanism to transfer your loan to a more responsive lender. Be sure to thank Senator Kennedy and the Congressional Democrats for that when you’re stuck in Student Loan Hell.

America is all about competition, but for some reason, Washington doesn’t see it that way. They don’t want competition in the traditional sense. They don’t want competition that benefits you, the consumer. They want sham “competition” where you have a “choice” of perhaps as many as two lenders in your state. You might only have one “choice” and if no lenders in your state want to participate in the program, the Feds will throw you to the “lender of last resort.” What kind of loan servicing do you think the Lender of Last Resort provides? Will they job out your loan problems to the Loan Servicer of Last Resort? You can pretty much count on that.

Tell your Congressmen and Senators that you want real competition in student loan lending, that you want a choice in lending, and that you want a workable mechanism for consolidating your student loans. Tell them to stop taking away your right to choose.

It still baffles me that the Congressional Research Office can tell your Representatives and Senators that their plan won’t save you money, and that very few of you will realize any benefit at all, and yet Congress persists in pushing this unworkable mess down our throats.

The Congressional Democrats are truly excited about what the Kennedy Plan will save you. What the plan is going to cost you is really much more to the point. Let’s take a look at what you’re going to lose.

First, you won’t have a choice of lender. The Kennedy plan sets up a ridiculous “auction” scheme, where the government has already capped the maximum interest rate it will accept from lenders, and limits the “winning bids” to two institutions per state.

Second, you’ll lose stability. If your state musters two lenders who are willing to make loans under these absurd conditions, they’ll only have the right to make these loans for two years at a time. After two years, the government again “auctions” the right to make student loans. You may get stuck with two or three lenders in the time it takes you to complete an undergraduate degree, and if you go to grad school, you might end up with lenders four and five. Is that kind of complexity really what you want?

Third, you’ll lose the ability to consolidate your loans. This is the thorn in Congress’ side, and they want it out bad. They were the ones who originally decided that you should be able to consolidate loans. When interest rates fell, however, that cost the Feds a lot, and they’re very unhappy about it. It seems like they’re taking it out on the FFELP lenders. In truth, they’re sticking you – the borrower. Under Kennedy’s plan, you won’t be able to consolidate your loans anymore. You could be paying five different student loan bills every month after you graduate. Five!

Fourth, the Kennedy Plan relies on deficit spending to fund student loans. Government issued bonds are long-term obligations. What this means for you is that after you finish your student loan payments, you’re still stuck paying the interest on the bonds the government issued to fund your loan in the first place. There’s no savings in this plan for you. You’ll be paying for this plan long after your itemized debt has been retired.

If this doesn’t really sound like a good way to save a few bucks, you’re right. It isn’t. Call your Senators and Representatives and tell them that you’re not interested in losing choice, stability, your ability to consolidate loans and that you don’t want to fund student loan programs through deficit spending.

Protect your right to choose. If you don’t speak up now, your rights may be gone forever.

Congress is still wrestling with the mess it made of student loan lending with last month’s legislation. The President has already indicated that he’s not interested in signing a plan like the one the Senate passed. The House plan is virtually incomprehensible, and promises pie-in-the-sky interest rate cuts that the Senate won’t deliver.

In the mean time, the borrowers are stuck in the middle. What’s the best course of action? First, learn about your options. Many people will tell you to get subsidized Federal student loans as a first preference, because they’ll save you money. Not true. That advice is about as helpful as telling you to go win the lottery is.

Not every prospective borrower is eligible for Federal student loans. Subsidized Federal student loans are available only to a small percentage of applicants, and a student’s financial need determines their award. If you and your family don’t meet specific income criteria, you don’t get subsidized loans.

You probably don’t get the best deal with Federal loans. FFELP lenders compete for your business. They offer interest rate cuts, origination and other fee waivers, and incentives for developing a good payment history. You don’t get any of that with Federal student loan programs, and with the exception of PLUS loans, the FDLP offers the same starting interest rates that the FFELP lenders do. Chances are good that you’ll save money by going with an FFELP lender over the FDLP.

After you’ve learned about your options, do some homework on potential lenders. Unlike the lies that the Congressional Democrats and Andrew Cuomo would have you believe, most FFELP lenders are honest, fair and forthright. They’re not in the game to take advantage of you and your university. Under the FFELP program, you have the right to choose any lender you like, regardless of whether they’re listed as a preferred loan vendor by your institution or not. You are always in control of your choice of lender. (That won’t be true under the Kennedy Plan, though.)

Choose the lender that best fits your needs and offers the incentives that best suit your situation. Lenders will compete for your business and can put together some very attractive financing packages. Pay attention to loan interest rates, but also pay attention to loan servicing. The direct impact of your loan servicing will mean more to you in the long run than the interest rate will. Congress caps the student loan interest rate for lenders in the FFEL program. The caps do not apply to non-FFELP loans, so it always pays to know whom you’re dealing with and what kind of loan you’re getting.

Congress wants to eliminate your choice. I suppose that’s one way of simplifying the process, but there’s a real, negative cost to simplicity, and that’s loss of choice. If you want to preserve choice and options, tell your Congressmen and Senators to stop shoehorning you into the Kennedy loan program

In a conference call with reporters recently, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings outlined a plan to provide additional oversight to student loan lenders. Ed’s plans include meeting with other representatives from other Federal agencies, such as the FDIC and the FTC. She also stated that Ed was in a “fact-finding” phase.

Ed is supposed to be supplying oversight to the student loan lenders right now. The questionable practices of a few student loan lenders arose under the watchful eye of Ed. Ed never said a word about these practices, never raised a single concern, never issued a warning, made a regulation, or investigated a single lender, even though Ed is vested with this authority, and frankly, it’s Ed’s job.

After all of the media coverage, investigations and even action by Congress, Spellings’ announcement that Ed is “fact-finding” goes beyond the pale, straight into the theater of the absurd. This is the agency that Congress has tapped to oversee the newly increased responsibilities of the Federal Direct Lending Program. You know, the one that Congress thinks will do a better job of managing the student loan program than private lenders will do?

The vast majority of FFELP lenders are honest, dependable to a fault, and provide the best possible lending terms and servicing programs to their borrowers. FFELP lenders have proudly served this country and its students for more than 40 years. It’s unfortunate that the actions of a few rogue lenders have tainted the reputations and the contributions of the FFELP lenders who have delivered service, convenience, and competitive loan products to America’s college population since Lyndon Johnson was in the White House.

In some ways, Ed has contributed significantly to the problems by failing to provide adequate advice and guidance to both borrowers and lenders, regulation of participants and sanctions against lenders who have abused the system. It’s not that Ed doesn’t have the power to make regulations; all Federal government agencies have basic regulatory powers in the absence of legislative direction. Ed could have done something to correct these problems, and instead, chose to do nothing.

Congress rewards this failure and lack of accountability by giving more responsibility to a slow, unresponsive agency that can’t even manage its own lending program properly. This approach shows just how far out of touch with reality Congress is. One of the real problems is that Ed isn’t providing oversight – so fix the real problem. Fix Ed and stop blaming honest, fair and diligent FFELP lenders who work within the program rules.

Tell your representatives in Congress that the real problem is that Ed is asleep at the switch. Honest FFELP lenders will have no problem cooperating fully with reform. They have already shown their willingness to correct improper or questionable lending practices without legislation. Once Ed starts providing real oversight, borrowers, lenders, politicians and the public will see real reform in student loan lending.

Congressional Democrats want you to believe that they really care about the amount of debt that college graduates have. Senators want you to believe that the FFELP is so rife with corruption and the financial misdeeds of greedy corporate and private lenders that they simply must act!

The truth is that no major legislation has come out of Congress in years. The politicians in Congress don’t get along, don’t work together, and put politics and polemics above the needs of the average taxpayer every single day. They’ve taken a lot of heat lately from the voters, who are tired of hearing their Congressional representatives and Senators point the finger at each other and blame the other side of the aisle for their inability to get things done.

Congressional Democrats think they have a shot at the White House in 2008 and they’re desperate to prove to the voters that they are a party of action that they’ll do anything to make themselves look good, and distract the voters from the fact that they’ve been wholly ineffective for years.

The student loan lending legislation is just a tool for the Congressional Democrats to make voters think they can get something done. It doesn’t matter what it is, they just want to make themselves look busy.

They don’t care about the impact that these devastating pieces of legislation will have on middle-class America. They don’t care if the measures they’ve offered have very little benefit to anyone. They don’t really care about what happens to the poorest of students. Congressional Democrats are willing to railroad the most marginalized students into a shoddy, government-run program so they can make themselves look good. If it weren’t student loan lending this year, it would have been something else. It could be something else. Next year, it will be something else

Here’s the real danger: Congress isn’t going to look back on student loan legislation until 2013. It doesn’t matter how much the cost of tuition and other expenses rise in that time. They will allocate a specific amount of money, and that’s that. This “set-and-forget” mentality is why the Stafford Loan caps went 15 years without adjustment, even though the cost of tuition was skyrocketing. That’s why the FFELP PLUS loans have a higher interest rate than the FDLP PLUS loans (a “typo” that Congress never bothered to go back and fix). That’s why Pell Grant amounts are so abysmally low.

Congress sets up a funding mechanism that lasts for years, but they never bother to go back to find out if the funding they projected was adequate for the task, or if it needs to be adjusted.

Tell your Congressmen and Senators that you don’t want them to forget. Tell them that you think the current funding mechanism is stable and well financed.

The Bush Administration says that it cannot support the Kennedy Plan to change the role of student loan lenders. The President believes that the government should be doing more to fund grants that students don’t have to repay. The Administration wants to combat the real problem: the rising cost of tuition. The government could better spend its money helping the poorest of students by giving money that students don’t have to repay. Students who don’t qualify for Federal grants will best benefit from a competitive student loan environment where lenders compete for student’s business.

Everyone would benefit if the Federal government started paying some attention to the reasons that college tuition is increasing so much. The cost of higher education, after all, is primarily determined by the cost of tuition, housing, and books – not the few percentage points in interest charged on student loans.

The real culprit in the amount of student loan debt a borrower has upon graduation has nothing to do with his or her interest rate. It has to do with how much the student borrowed. Students can’t and don’t borrow money they don’t need. They borrow what they need to cover their college expenses – namely, tuition, room and board, and books. If Congress wants to do something for the poor college student, it should take a long, hard look at the cost of tuition, and start asking why college tuition rises so much faster than the rate of inflation.

Amuse yourself and do a Google search on the phrase “rising faster than the rate of inflation” to find out what’s getting more expensive. Prescription drugs, health care costs, wages, energy costs, food prices, and college tuition are all rising faster that the rate of inflation. Colleges and universities have to pay for health care and prescription drug insurance, employee salaries, energy to heat large public buildings, and food for resident students.

Congress can do something about rising health care, prescription drug and energy costs, three of the largest culprits. They could be addressing the cost of rising health care and prescription drugs. They could be promoting alternative energy programs to help colleges and universities reduce their energy costs. Instead, they choose to attack student loan lenders. Talk about disconnecting from reality.

Tell your senators to tune into the real reasons college tuition rises so fast and start attacking those problems at their sources, instead of looking for someone to blame. If they insist upon having someone to blame, tell them to look in the mirror.

You can make a difference
Call your Senators
Send your Senators an e-mail
Download a letter and fax it to your Senators
Sign the petition and
Tell your friends the truth about the proposed student loan legislation

Senator Kennedy’s plan will impose severe cuts on the student loan industry. Many current participants will no longer be able to provide loans to students. A few large lenders may still be able to participate, but borrowers will not enjoy the choice, competition and benefits they now see in the FFELP programs.

The House Democrats have just plain lied to their constituents about delivering half-off interest rates to student loan borrowers. It’s a nice tactic to get your attention. Banks make easy targets because who likes them anyway? It’s easy for Senator Kennedy to get up in front of the Senate and claim that his plan is taking away billions from the student loan lenders and giving it to the most needy college borrowers. He’s a modern-day Robin Hood.

He’s stealing alright, but not from the wealthy. He’s taking away choice, opportunities and cold, hard cash from the working class families who need additional help to see their sons and daughters through college.

He’s not giving to the poor. He’s playing a shell game. For a few extra grant dollars for college, he’s committing the American people to a huge deficit spending plan to generate enough money to fund this mess. Once the poor get out of college, they can start paying taxes on the billions of dollars the Feds had to borrow to pay for this program.

He’s demolishing a program that the Brookings Institution called one of the 50 greatest accomplishments of the US Federal government. The public-private partnership that created the student loan industry has always worked well. Private lenders have always been ready, willing and able to fund the hopes and dreams of students who wanted to go to college and couldn’t otherwise afford to. The FFELP lenders have always stepped in when the Federal government failed to produce enough grant money for students of ordinary means to go to college

For some reason, Senator Kennedy doesn’t like that idea. It’s somehow better to drive the government deeper into debt than it is to use and improve the plan that’s funded 50 million American dreams in the last 42 years.

It’s not too late to avoid disaster. Call, write or email your Senators today and tell them that you want to preserve choice in lending through the FFEL program. Tell Senator Robin Hood that robbing the working class of the FFEL program will have catastrophic effects on America and in the long run, it won’t save the government a dime.

You can make a difference
Call your Senators
Send your Senators an e-mail
Download a letter and fax it to your Senators
Sign the petition and
Tell your friends the truth about the proposed student loan legislation

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.

I guess it’s pretty clear from this blog that I love reading bills. I figure if someone went to all that trouble to write them and most Congressmen aren’t going to actually read them before they vote, I should at least take a look. Sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised when a piece of lucid, helpful legislation is drafted and I delight in telling my elected officials my opinion. Unfortunately, I haven’t been pleasantly surprised lately. No, today I was just angry. It seems some Senators are trying to sneak in their agenda while nobody’s watching. Well too bad because I’m watching!

S. 259 sounds pretty innocuous based on the title, the description, and the first few paragraphs. “To authorize the establishment of the Henry Kuualoha Giugni Kupuna Memorial Archives at the University of Hawaii.” I had no idea who Henry Kuualoha Giugni Kupuna was so I looked it up. He sounds like a pretty decent guy. He served in WWII. He was a policeman and firefighter. He worked for Senator Inouye in Hawaii and then in Washington for 30 years. He was the 30th Sergeant-at-Arms for the Senate. Ok, so Senator Inouye wants to do his old friend a solid and name an archive after him. I really don’t have a problem with that. Mr. Kupuna sounds like a good guy who really cared about his native Hawaii and I’d rather they name an archive after him than someone who just wrote a check.

That’s when I saw my first read flag.
“Mr. AKAKA (for himself, Mr. INOUYE, Mr. BYRD, Mr. REID, Mr. STEVENS, Mr. KENNEDY, Mr. COCHRAN, Mr. BIDEN, Mrs. CLINTON, Mr. DOMENICI, Mr. DORGAN, Mr. KERRY, Mr. LEAHY, Mr. LIEBERMAN, Mrs. LINCOLN, Mr. LOTT, Ms. MURKOWSKI, Mr. NELSON of Nebraska, Mr. REED, Mr. ROCKEFELLER, Mr. SPECTER, and Mrs. DOLE) introduced the following bill;”

Uh-oh. Kennedy, Clinton, Kerry and Rockefeller. I’ve seen those names before. That means the bill is going to need a little extra scrutiny.

The bill starts off okay. I don’t think it’s a federal issue; but, if they want to add cultural data from Native Alaskans and American Indians to the archive then I can see where the Feds might want to help.Then comes Section 1, paragraph b, sub-section 2:
“(2) to award scholarships to facilitate access to a college education for students who can not independently afford such education”
Scholarships? So are they saying federal money to fund University of Hawaii scholarships? Isn’t that a state school? I mean, no offense to the students of Hawaii, but why would they get scholarships? I could sense something else was wasn’t right.

“(10) to increase the economic and financial literacy of college students through the proliferation of proven best practices used at other institutions of higher education that result in positive behavioral change toward improved debt and credit management and economic decision making.”

Huh? Wait. You’ve lost me there. What does a cultural archive have to do with debt management? Then it hits me. “Best practices at other institutions” is code for “Colleges using the FDLP”. So now they’re claiming their support of the FDLP is to promote financial literacy among college students. So as a college student you should look to the government for examples of fiscal responsibility. Uh-huh.

To show an example of what fiscal responsibility looks like, Kennedy, Clinton, Kerry, and Rockefeller have signed the bill with there unique watermark – a blank check.

“(c) Authorization of Appropriations- There is authorized to be appropriated to carry out this section $5,000,000 for fiscal year 2007, $10,000,000 for fiscal year 2008, and such sums as may be necessary for each of the fiscal years 2009 through 2012.”

So this year they want $5 million, next year $10 million and then a blank check for 2009…2010….2011…2012… There’s no mention of measuring how effectively the money is being spent or of a cap on the amount of funds. Ok students, now you should follow this fine example and plan your financial aid appropriately.

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.

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.

Another day, another self-serving piece of legislation works its way through the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. But it isn’t about how the media is going to talk about the legislation. It’s about the students. At least that’s what the media and the Senators sponsoring the legislation tell me.

To be fair, some of the federal education programs need work, but the FFELP is doing a great job. Sure, there’s room for improvement, but it isn’t costing tax payers any money and the lenders and school administrators like it. A-ha! That’s a new tactic for this season – attack the school administrators. Did you know one school official said he was once offered a trip to someplace sunny to hear about a lender’s new loan program? What’s next – doctors having expensive dinners paid for by drug reps? Senators going on golfing retreats paid for by special interests? It’s not like Senator Kennedy would use a gala hosted by a non-profit financial aid resource provider that was organized by the CEO of a large bank and a TV news anchor woman to soap box the legislation he’s sponsoring. Well, I mean he’s not doing that again.

Here’s the thing: If the politicians want to rally against perceived misconduct then they should start closer to home. When the Sunshine Act went before the House for vote, a little addition was made to spell out what financial aid officers and lenders can and cannot do. Sure, there are already laws in place like the Fairness in Lending Act and the Truth in Lending Act that cover that, but those are old. The Truth in Lending Act is from the 60’s! Ted Kennedy is the only politician who can still ride that horse to the polls. The important thing is that little addition makes it even more politically timely than the bill already was. It doesn’t matter if it’s redundant. It only matters if it will play well in the press. That doesn’t sound like putting students first to me.

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.

Your elected officials are supposed to represent you to the best of their ability. Let me repeat that - to the best of their ability. Their job is to put themselves in your shoes. Here are the two biggest problems with that. They’re used to wearing $400 wingtips while you’re stuck wearing Nike knock-offs and they are treating their jobs like hobbies.

I’m all about everyone getting ahead in life, but it seems Congressmen tend to get ahead faster than the rest of us. Only 1% of Americans are millionaires, but 35% of those in Congress are. That doesn’t seem like a representative sample to me. I bet your Senators don’t use coupons at the grocery store. I bet they don’t even wish they had used coupons. I bet they don’t even do their own shopping.

So why do we trust their opinions about what we should buy when it comes to student aid? Their children don’t need loans to pay for college. If any of them have student loans it is probably as part of some complicated tax deduction scheme, not necessity. They say they understand the importance of education, but do they understand that not everyone can just write a check to pay for it? If they know what we really need, why do they keep drafting legislation like the Sunshine Act which clearly isn’t what we need?

Maybe I’m being too tough on them. They are representing the people to the best of their ability. They don’t understand things that you and I take as common sense. They can’t be expected to know how the other half, or in this case the other 99%, live! And that’s why you and I and everyone we know needs to get more involved. Call your Representative. Email your Senator. Sign the petition to stop the student loan tax. Tell them that they need to stop representing themselves and start representing you! Make it clear to them you want better student aid, not less!

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.

I hate to get all political about this, and I’m sure Sen. Edward Kennedy is a fine person (OK – I’m NOT so sure about that), but does he really think he can play both sides of the student aid issue and keep what little credibility he has?

He says it is time to stop thinking about profits and start thinking about students. Then he says the FDLP (Federal Direct Lending Program) is more profitable for the government than the FFELP (Federal Family Education Loan Program), so the FFELP must be reformed. Whoa right there, senator. That would mean you think the only way to better serve students is if the government makes a profit? I think Kennedy was seeing just how much fuzzy math, faulty logic, and how many unsubstantiated assumptions he could pack into one piece of legislation.

I agree that students need to be championed. I think you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who would say students and education are not important to the future of America. I bet you couldn’t even find someone in the lending business to say it isn’t important. In fact, lenders have a more direct reason than anyone to support students. Why? Profit. There – I’ve said it, and I refuse to accept the senator’s argument that private profit is a dirty word. Part of the practical reason students go to college is to get better jobs when they graduate. They’d like to get a little personal profit. Who doesn’t?

So Kennedy’s plan would champion students by a) removing their options, b) tying students with governmental apron strings, c) forcing private lenders to reduce staff … How exactly does this help students? It isn’t helping students pay for college, which is what the senator and the other members of the Senate Education Committee should be trying to do. Drafting legislation to make a political point is wrong. Claiming that legislation is in the best interest of an underrepresented group like students is a lie.

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.

I don’t want you to feel bad if you are confused about the difference between the Federal Direct Lending Program (FDLP) and the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP). Congress has plenty of well-paid experts to explain the difference to them and they still don’t seem to grasp it.

On the surface it doesn’t seem complicated at all. FDLP and FFELP are both federal student aid programs. FDLP loans are handled directly from the government. FFELP loans are made through a private lender. Most universities participate in one program or the other, but some participate in both. What is the point of having two programs that satisfy the same need? Perhaps one offers a higher loan amount … Nope. Maybe one is only for students with a particular set of circumstances … Nope. It really is as simple as government/government vs. government/private.

It’s great that the federal government wants to protect and help students with the high cost of an education, but when did the government decide that it knows more about lending money than, oh, I don’t know, banks?

Under FFELP, private organizations must follow certain rules to qualify. These financial groups win because they receive new customers and have the opportunity to convert those new customers into long-term customers. The private organizations are in this for the long haul. They want the borrowers to succeed, graduate, and become even more lucrative customers. It’s all part of the glory of capitalism.

Then there’s the FDLP. The government isn’t in the business of making money. That’s why it isn’t a “business.” The FDLP cuts out the middleman and loans money directly to the consumer. I want you to think about that. They’ve cut out the middleman – the man who understands business and money, the man who hasn’t encouraged federal agencies to frivolously use all the money in their budgets so their budgets won’t be cut the next year. Is this the “middleman” you’d want to see cut out of the process?

I’m not a genius at math, but I know:

Bureaucracy + Money - Private Experts / Political Rhetoric = Bad Business.

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.

Do you feel passionate about protecting your rights as a student? Well, if you haven’t yet heard, those rights are under attack. Don’t buy what the politicians are selling, the student loan legislation being debated in the Senate will NOT save students thousands of dollars, it will cost them thousands of dollars. It’s really time for students to take a stand and protect their rights or they will pay for it later through a failure to act.

Change is Simple
Change begins with you and a simple choice to act. In order to get the student loan legislation changed, we must express our disapproval.

Call your senators. A simple phone call makes a difference. Take just a minute of your time to contact your state senator by phone. On the call, just say:

“As a constituent and supporter of student loan rights, I ask you to vote against new student loan legislation so that student loan borrowers continue to be able to choose their lender, and so students can get discounts from lenders in order to be able to afford a college education.” (Of course feel free to personalize your message).
This is the most influential means of effecting change in the shortest time possible, unless you want to visit your state senator personally. You’ll probably not actually speak to the senator when you call, but rather to an aide who is required to keep a record of all calls.
Call your Senators

Just make sure to also sign the petition and fax a letter to your senator (see below).

Sign the petition. You can easily access the petition online. Once you’re there, simply complete the data fields and press the submit button. Then watch for an e-mail message that contains a link which you’ll need to confirm your signature.
Sign the Petition

Fax a letter to your senators. It’s quick and easy.
1. Start by accessing the letter online.
2. Download the word file which contains a letter that you can fax directly to your senator. Make sure to customize your letter, adding your own personal comments or opinion about the issue.
3. On this page, you can locate the appropriate senator’s fax number for your state and fax a letter.
Warning: If you neglect to personalize the letter, it is likely that it will not be counted as a separate signature.
Fax a Letter to your Senators

Send an e-mail message to your senators. Let your voice be heard by sending an e-mail message about protecting student loans to your senators. Simply access the e-mail message, fill in the data fields and add personal comments to the message provided for you. It only takes a minute.
By selecting your state, e-mail messages will be directed to your senators.
eMail your Senators

When you’re done, congratulations! You’ve just played a huge part in changing the student loan landscape and protecting the future of low-cost college education. But don’t stop there.

Tell your friends, contacts, and anyone you think of who can join with you in making a difference by positively impacting student loan legislation.

It’s easy to share this information with your friends by forwarding an e-mail to them.
Tell your Friends

Who knows, in a short time your simple act of making ONE phone call and fax combined with the efforts of those you tell could snowball into something so massive that the politicians will be forced to pay attention.
That’s what I call change. It all starts with a single decision to do something. Just watch what you can do to change the world, and all it takes is 60 seconds …

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.