I have a secret hope. I hope that on Paul Ryan's Judgment Day, I get to watch from a teeny crack in the door while stifling squeals of glee at his fate. This is a man who loves that authoritarian "We Can't Afford It" line while sucking up everything he can from the public coffers. Don't forget, Paul Ryan is the guy who saved his survivor's Social Security benefits to go to college. Ah, but what's good for the goose isn't so great for the gander, it seems.
Think Progress has the transcript:
LOWE: I come from a very middle-class family and under President Obama, I get $5,500 per year to pay for school, which doesn’t come close to covering all of the funding, but it helps ease the burden. Under your plan, you cut it by 15 percent. I was just curious why you would cut a grant that goes directly to the middle- and lower-class people that need it the most.
RYAN: ‘Cause Pell Grants have become unsustainable. It’s all borrowed money…Look, I worked three jobs to pay off my student loans after college. I didn’t get grants, I got loans, and we need to have a system of viable student loans to be able to do this.
The second concern I have is, in the health care bill — people don’t know this — for budgetary gimmickry reasons, the administration and Congress at the time, took over the student loan industry. So they had the federal government, the Department of Education, basically confiscate the private student loan industry.
Paul Ryan loves student loans. Loves. Via TNR:
Ryan is a fervent ally of the college lending industry. In 2007, he was one of only 71 Republicans to vote against the College Student Relief Act, which would have cut the interest rate on many student loans, including the FFEL program, in half. Inside Higher Ed notedthat the bill would cut “deeply and directly into lenders' profits.” The bill passed the House 356-71, but stalled in the Senate.
And of course, the Affordable Care Act ended the profiteering by our favorite bankaneers by taking them out as middleman, so they're a little bit flushed over that and looking for their favorite stooge to punish students, it seems.
On a personal level, the one goal we've had is for our kids to get a degree without being in debt. We're one semester away from the first graduation. The next is heading to college next year with what I hope is a good enough academic record to qualify for some scholarships. The eldest paid for college by enlisting. This is all wonderful, but they're facing the same problems as everyone else: no jobs.
Paul Ryan's cynical, nasty retort to this student is emblematic of what the Republican Party has become. I can't wait for him to get what he's dished out to everyone else. In the meantime, here are some visual reminders of what people who went into debt to go to school are living in today's world:
and this:
