During a question-and-answer session on January 23 with students and community members at Kansas State University, sophomore Tiffany Cooper asked:
Tiffany Cooper: Hi, I just want to get your comments about education. Recently, $12.7 billion was cut from education, and I was just wondering how that’s supposed to help our futures?
President Bush: Education budget was cut — say it again. What was cut?
Tiffany Cooper: Twelve point seven billion dollars was cut from education, and I was just wondering how is that supposed to help our…
Bush: At the federal level?
Tiffany Cooper: Yes.
Bush: I don’t think that — I don’t think we’ve actually — for higher education? Student loans?
Tiffany Cooper: Yes, student loans.
(Full transcript: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/01/20060123-4.html)
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Last month, the Senate passed a budget-cutting bill that takes a net of $12.7 billion out of the federal student aid programs in order to help finance the recent round of tax cut legislation. Seventy percent of the gross savings (which total approximately $21 billion) generated in the bill are achieved by continuing the practice of tacking on excessive interest rates on student loans and by increasing college loan costs for parent borrowers.
Two-thirds of all college graduates take out loans to help pay for their college. The average debt of graduates is nearly $20,000. The student loan cuts just passed by Congress, according to experts cited by the Wall Street Journal, will raise the average cost over 10 years
by $2,000 to students and $3,000 to parents.
As my student loans won’t be paid off until what feels like 2050, I am terribly upset and frustrated by this round of legislation. Aren’t you?
Wow. I know this has been happening, but when you lay it out like that, I understand why they were talking on CNN today about why young adults are having a harder time making it into the real world. It’s because we have all of these damn student loans. As someone who has been forced to live with my parents again, I ask: “why does the government hate young people??” Bush is just an old, arrogant guy who was handed everything he ever wanted in his life. He just doesn’t get what is really happening out in the world.
This is all very vexing.
Thank God. I love tax cuts.