Lies, Damn Lies, and the Names of Government Programs
For taxpayers, there are no consumer protections
On September 7, 2007, the Senate passed the conference report to the College Cost Reduction Act (H.R.2669). If the President signs this bill into law, the cost of a college education will most certainly rise. Like most acts of Congress, this piece of legislation does nothing in its title. It does prove that the members of the House and Senate are unfamiliar with the most basic principles of economics.
H. R. 2669 doesn’t contain any provisions to actually lower the cost of college. All it does is provide lower cost loans to students. This will increase the number of students competing for college admission, also known as the demand for a college education. As anyone that graduated from a public high school before 1979 can tell you, an increase in demand with the same old supply results in an increase in price. This explains why higher education is second only to government bureaucracies in resilience to economic disruption.
This loan program is sold as access to a college education while all it provides is more inflation in the cost of a degree. The student is simply saddled with more debt while our dollars are eaten by the education governmental complex. Congress thinks everyone can budget their household finances like the government, simply borrowing endlessly and never paying back. In truth, the only ones getting the goodies are the politicians and the socialists that get our money.
The question I have is why legislators vote for laws whose flaws are obvious to any school child unencumbered by a public education? I’ll leave it up to you to decide if it is simple ignorance, blatant pandering to desperate voters, or a simple desire to shovel taxpayer money to the education industry.