A United States senator has posed the question that’s on the minds of millions of Americans: Has the Obama administration’s “hope and change” spending put America’s fiscal future in jeopardy? Sen. John Thune of South Dakota said, “Three years ago, President Obama ran a campaign based on the promise of “hope and change,” but for millions of Americans – from the middle class to recent college graduates – President Obama’s policies have not brought the kind of change they were promised.
The policies the president has implemented since his inauguration have weakened our economy and reduced opportunity. Even worse, his original bad policies are now begetting more bad policies, as is evident in the debate over student loan interest rates.” Thune made the statements in an op-ed piece for Fox News.
Congress is being forced into a corner and must decide whether it’s prudent to allOW student loan rates to double, or cut spending elsewhere in the nation’s budget to allow rates to remain at their present rate of 3.4 percent.
Why are we in this mess during an election year? “Instead of extending the reduced student loan rate, however, the president and congressional Democrats took $9 billion from student aid and used it to pay for parts of ObamaCare,” said Thune.
Where that leaves the U.S. is we double student loan rates or steal the money from ObamaCare to allow politicians to play with our tax dollars until after the November elections.
Let’s face it, we can’t afford ObamaCare, a new entitlement, and students can’t afford a doubling of the interest they pay on government college loans in a job environment that sports a high unemployment rate.
Thune’s right, we have to take an honest look at our nation’s financial situation and admit we can’t afford massive new programs that bleed our economy of billions.
—Keith Hansen
Comments (2)
Add commentMr. Hansen's Unbiased Sources?
Once again Mr. Hansen shows his right wing tendencies when he only provides a partisan Republican Senator from South Dakota while a guest on Fox News to substantiate his conclusion about the Affordable Care Act. How can you be more unbiased...."Fair and Balanced", right?
Mr. Hansen should consult sources like the Congressional Budget Office and read that the recent change in the CBO estimates were because the original estimates were for years 2012-2021 while the new report includes years 2012-2022, one additional year. That is the main reason the costs have risen.
From the CBO report:
"The current estimate of the gross costs of the coverage provisions ($1,496 billion through 2021) is about $50 billion higher than last year’s projection; however, the other budgetary effects of those provisions, which partially offset those gross costs, also have increased in CBO and JCT’s estimates (to $413 billion), leading to the small decrease in the net 10-year tally." (JCT = Joint Committee on Taxation).
The CBO has previously stated that, overall, health care reform will REDUCE the federal deficit, and that condition has not changed.
So, who do you trust? Republican Senator Thune on Fox News, or the Congressional Budge Office?
Who is this masked man?
Keith Hansen was supposedly hired by the Dispatch to be the "Vice President of Audience Development" -- or so they told us.
It never happened. A better title would be "The Resident Mouthpiece for the far-right wing of the Republican Party.
Or perhaps, the Dispatch's very own "Vice President of Propaganda".