White House threatens to veto student loan bill

ALAN FRAM

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — The White House threat­ened a veto Fri­day of a Repub­li­can bill keep­ing the inter­est rates on fed­eral stu­dent loans from dou­bling this sum­mer, object­ing that the mea­sure would finance its $5.9 bil­lion cost by abol­ish­ing a health care program.

The veto warn­ing came as GOP lead­ers hunted for votes for the mea­sure, which they were try­ing to push through the House. They were run­ning into oppo­si­tion from out­side con­ser­v­a­tive groups like the Club for Growth, which was pres­sur­ing Repub­li­cans to oppose the leg­is­la­tion because, they said, the gov­ern­ment should not sub­si­dize stu­dent loans.

The election-year clash between the White House and Repub­li­cans over the bill has esca­lated from a dis­pute over help­ing mil­lions of stu­dents into a broader proxy bat­tle over how to best help fam­i­lies cope with the weak job mar­ket and ail­ing econ­omy, and how each side treats women’s issues.

The GOP bill would repeal a pre­ven­tive care pro­gram cre­ated under Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s health care over­haul law of 2010. Pick­ing up on a theme that House Democ­rats have been sound­ing this week, the White House said that “women in par­tic­u­lar” ben­e­fit from the pro­gram — a mes­sage that reflects the Demo­c­ra­tic effort to woo women vot­ers by accus­ing Repub­li­cans of wag­ing a war on them.

“This is a polit­i­cally moti­vated pro­posal and not the seri­ous response that the prob­lem fac­ing America’s col­lege stu­dents deserves,” said the White House mes­sage. It said Obama’s advis­ers would urge him to veto the bill.

Repub­li­cans have called the pre­ven­tion pro­gram a “slush fund,” say­ing the money is not con­trolled tightly enough.

“The pres­i­dent is so des­per­ate to fake a fight that he’s will­ing to veto a bill to help stu­dents over a slush fund that he advo­cated cut­ting in his own bud­get. It’s a sim­ple as this: Repub­li­cans are act­ing to help col­lege stu­dents and the pres­i­dent is now get­ting in the way,” said Michael Steel, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Repub­li­cans noted that many Democ­rats had voted ear­lier this year to take money from the pre­ven­tive health fund to help pay to keep doc­tors’ Medicare reim­burse­ments from drop­ping. Obama’s own bud­get in Feb­ru­ary pro­posed cut­ting $4 bil­lion from the same fund to pay for some of his priorities.

The House bill would keep inter­est rates for sub­si­dized Stafford loans at 3.4 per­cent, instead of let­ting them rise to 6.8 per­cent on July 1 with­out any con­gres­sional action.

Even if the House bill passes as expected, it seems cer­tain to go nowhere in the Democrat-controlled Sen­ate. Sen­ate Democ­rats have a bill of their own extend­ing the lower inter­est rate and paid for by boost­ing pay­roll taxes paid by high-earning own­ers of some pri­vate firms. Repub­li­cans oppose it.

Friday’s vote comes with con­gres­sional Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats, as well as Obama and his near-certain GOP oppo­nent this fall, Mitt Rom­ney, com­pet­ing at every turn over who has the best pre­scrip­tion to wring jobs out of the still-struggling econ­omy. The stu­dent loan bat­tle fits nicely into that theme, with 7.4 mil­lion low– and middle-income stu­dents and their par­ents reliant on Stafford loans and a col­lege edu­ca­tion sym­bol­iz­ing the ticket to eco­nomic success.

The vote also fol­lows days of campaign-style road trips that Obama used to get in front of the issue and por­tray Repub­li­cans as foot-draggers on it. The week began with Rom­ney say­ing he favored keep­ing loan rates low, remarks he hopes will pre­vent Obama from mak­ing the mat­ter a cam­paign fight but may have helped prod con­gres­sional Repub­li­cans into action.

On Thurs­day, Boehner tried putting the focus on Obama’s travel this week to three col­lege cam­puses, where the pres­i­dent used rous­ing ral­lies to talk up his stu­dent loan effort. Boehner called the col­lege vis­its “polit­i­cal stunts and, frankly, they aren’t worth it and wor­thy of his office.” He said Obama should repay tax­pay­ers for the use of Air Force One for the trip.

White House spokesman Jay Car­ney defended the travel, say­ing it helped win over Republicans.

“This is offi­cial busi­ness. And he did it effec­tively,” Car­ney said.

Democ­rats noted that Repub­li­cans pre­vi­ously had ques­tioned the wis­dom of keep­ing stu­dents’ inter­est rates low. They also accused Repub­li­cans of revers­ing them­selves, after vot­ing ear­lier this month for a 2013 fed­eral bud­get that let Stafford loan rates dou­ble as scheduled.

For House Minor­ity Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the empha­sis was the GOP’s cuts in the pre­ven­tive health pro­gram, whose ini­tia­tives she said include breast can­cer screen­ing and children’s immu­niza­tions. She con­trasted that with a Demo­c­ra­tic bill extend­ing the low stu­dent rates by cut­ting sub­si­dies to oil and nat­ural gas com­pa­nies, which is opposed by the GOP.

Pelosi char­ac­ter­ized the Repub­li­can view as, “‘We pre­fer tax sub­si­dies for big oil rather than the health of America’s women.’”

The higher inter­est rates, if trig­gered, would affect the 7.4 mil­lion under­grad­u­ates expected to bor­row new Stafford loans begin­ning July 1. This year, 8 mil­lion stu­dents took out such loans, aver­ag­ing $3,568, accord­ing to the Edu­ca­tion Department.

Despite the par­ti­san bat­tle lines, it seemed pos­si­ble that some mem­bers of both par­ties would defect from their lead­ers’ positions.

Her­itage Action for Amer­ica, a con­ser­v­a­tive group, was lob­by­ing Repub­li­cans to oppose the GOP bill and let inter­est rates rise, say­ing to do oth­er­wise would bur­den tax­pay­ers. Sev­eral con­ser­v­a­tive GOP law­mak­ers said Thurs­day they hadn’t decided how to vote.

On the Demo­c­ra­tic side, party lead­ers were pres­sur­ing their rank-and-file to oppose the Repub­li­can mea­sure. Some Democ­rats were eager to vote to keep stu­dent loan rates low, though it meant accept­ing GOP health care cuts.

Rep. Ger­ald Con­nolly, D-Va., said some Democ­rats “may feel upon reflec­tion that they’ve got to swal­low hard but swal­low” those health care reduc­tions. He said he hadn’t decided how to vote.

Posted by AP News on Apr 27 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.