Elizabeth Warren’s student debt bill is going nowhere fast

The measure she introduced Tuesday, the Bank on Students Emergency Loan Refinancing Act, would let debtors refinance at the relatively lower interest rates passed into law last summer that are currently offered to new students. She noted that the government’s projected collection of $66 billion in student loan repayments between 2007 and 2012 is “insane.”

“Exploding student loan debt is crushing young people and dragging down our economy,” Warren added in a statement. “Allowing students to refinance their loans would put money back in the pockets of people who invested in their education.”

Can’t argue the math of that — and there’s openness among Republicans to the idea of refinancing, one GOP member of the House Education and the Workforce Committee said, according to the AP. The question is, as it always is, How do we pay for it?

So, of course, Warren’s legislation would fund the loss in revenue it’d cause the government by enacting the “Buffett Rule,” a tax hike that punishes wealthy people for being wealthy. Democrats have tried to push through this measure for years now (almost three), and as a background sheet accompanying Warren’s bill states, it’s all to ensure “that millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share in taxes,” and yada yada yada.

To play this out, the GOP won’t go along with the tax hike, and the student loan refinancing debate will turn into a mudslinging match about how Republicans are holding millions of student loan borrowers hostage to protect their rich friends (like the KOCH BROTHERS!). The issue will go unresolved, Democrats will get a few soundbites for the nightly news stating that Republicans care more about the wealthy than deeply indebted young adults, and we’ll all continue to go about our lives.

It’s the politically inventive carousel of Washington, D.C., and to partially quote a phrase from one Stewie Griffin, it “keeps on spinnin’.”