Like other Democrats before her, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D) continues to blame the GOP for allowing the interest rates on federal student loans to double earlier this month, arguing that they allowed the interest rates to rise so large corporations can continue to benefit from tax loopholes.
Warren made the accusation during the 2013 Make Progress National Summit, a progressive conference hosted by the newly renamed Generation Progress (formerly Campus Progress) in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.
“The tax code is littered with tax loopholes that benefit the very wealthy,” Warren told the crowd of young progressives on site. “Republicans want to protect these giveaways and they want to pay for them by having our students pay higher interest rates.
“So when Republicans say that they won’t lower the interest rate on student loans, what they’re really saying is that their long term financial plan is to keep making profits off the backs of students so that corporations can protect their loopholes,” she added.
Republicans were never against lowering student loan interest rates or allowing them to stay the same, however. What Warren seems to have forgotten is that it was House Republicans back in May who passed the Smarter Solutions for Students Act, which would tie student loan interest rates to the financial markets – a plan that is similar to a proposal President Obama made in his most recent budget.
That evidently didn’t mean much to the Democratic senator, however, as she continued to place the blame on Senate Republicans – despite the fact that the GOP didn’t support the chamber’s bill because they wanted to come to a more long term, permanent solution to keeping student loan interest rates low and not just another quick fix. She also seems to have overlooked the fact that the bill’s primary sponsor was a Democratic colleague of hers – West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid ultimately rejected Manchin’s legislation – leading to the rate hike on July 1 – and the chamber rejected a similar bipartisan bill last week as well.
