Thursday, 26 Apr 2012 03:53 PM
The partisan bickering broke out as the House prepared to debate legislation that Republican leaders rushed to the floor to try to seize the initiative on the issue and blunt Obama’s re-election pitch for the youth vote.
House Republicans’ legislation, to be voted on tomorrow, would extend for another year the 3.4 percent interest rate on college student loans. Unless Congress acts by July 1, the rate will rise to 6.8 percent. Senate Democrats and Republicans are offering competing plans for freezing the interest rate.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told reporters today that she would urge fellow Democrats to vote against the Republican measure because it would be financed by eliminating child immunizations, cervical-cancer screenings and other disease prevention programs.
Republicans would pay for freezing the interest rate by waging “another assault on women’s health,” said Pelosi of California.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters today he was “very disappointed” with the House proposal. Reducing funds for preventive health care “doesn’t sound like a good deal to me,” the Nevada Democrat said.
Obama and Mitt Romney, who declared himself the Republican presidential nominee after sweeping five primary contests on April 24, are vying for the youth vote in a race that pollsters project will be close.
The former Massachusetts governor joined Obama in urging lawmakers to freeze interest rates students pay for the government loans while blaming him for an economy in which “50 percent of recent college graduates are unemployed or underemployed.”
Senate Democrats and the White House are seeking to pay the $6 billion cost of a one-year interest-rate freeze by limiting a tax provision that allows some owners of so-called S- corporations to avoid paying Medicare payroll taxes on their earnings.
“We believe there’s an easy solution,” Reid said. “We can pay for this with a tax that people who make a lot of money have been avoiding for a long time.”
Obama, 50, told students in Iowa City, Iowa, yesterday that he and first lady Michelle Obama were paying off student loans as recently as eight years ago. “We’ve been in your shoes,” he said at the University of Iowa. “We can’t price the middle class out of an education.”
A Senate plan modeled on Obama’s rate-freeze proposal will come up for a vote in May after the Senate returns from next week’s recess, a Senate Democratic leadership aide said.
“We and the president are going to keep up the pressure on this issue,” Charles Schumer of New York, the Senate’s third- ranking Democrat, told reporters today. He said Republicans are “still battling this student loan bill. They’re just doing it in a stealthy way.”
Boehner said the $6 billion cost of preserving the 3.4 percent rate for an additional year would be financed under his proposal from a disease prevention and public-health fund in the health-care overhaul law Congress passed in 2010 when Democrats were in the majority.
Boehner derided that source as one of the “slush funds” in the health-care measure.
The Republican bill would rescind the remaining $11.9 billion from the fund and use $5.9 billion to freeze loan interest rates for a year. The rest would be used for deficit reduction.
Boehner rejected a reporter’s suggestion that he was joining Obama to try to get the youth vote. “Please, this issue is not a partisan issue” because “no one here expected that interest rates were going to go up in July,” he said.
The House bill is H.R. 4628.
Speaker Boehner Blasts Obama During House Speech: ‘Do We Have To Fight About Everything?’
“How in the world did we get here,” Boehner began. “A fight being picked over an issue that everyone knew was going to be resolved. A fight being picked over an issue that there is no fight over.”
“Democrats, five years ago, put this clip in the law that would require interest rates to more than double on July first. I don’t know why they did it, but they did it,” Boehner continued. He said that no one wants to see those rates go up, and there is broad bipartisan agreement that low rates should be extended.
“Why do people insist that we have to have a political fight on something where there is no fight,” Boehner continued. “My god, do we have to fight about everything?”
“Now, we’re going to have a fight about women’s health. Give me a break,” Boehner said to applause.
This the latest plank in the so-called “war on women,” entirely created by my colleagues across the aisle for political gain. Let’s review the facts: The President, in his budget, called for reductions in spending in this slush fund that’s given to the Secretary of HHS. The President called for reductions in spending. He may have already forgotten that several months ago you all voted to cut $4 billion out of this slush fund when they passed the payroll tax credit bill. So to accuse us of wanting to gut women’s health is absolutely not true. Ladies and gentlemen, this is beneath us. This is beneath the dignity of this House and dignity of our constituents. They expect us to come here and to be honest with each other. To work out these issues. And to pick this big political fight where there is no fight is just silly. Give me a break.Boehner received a standing ovation from his colleagues in the House Republican caucuses after his impassioned speech.
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