GOP slams Dems' education proposal as federal power grab
Republicans and the White House have "major" disagreements on education policy, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said Saturday in the weekly Republican address, including a fresh dispute over the scope of federal involvement in education. But on student loans, he argued, the White House and the GOP actually have a lot in common.
The interest rate on federal student loans is set to double on July 1, from 3.4 to 6.8 percent, unless Congress acts to prevent it. The Republican House passed a bill that would peg student loan interest rates to the market, rather than arbitrarily setting the number, an idea Alexander called "fairer to students and fairer to taxpayers."
And although the president has said that House Republicans did not approach the issue "the right way," calling on them to go back to the drawing board, his own proposal on student loans would also peg loan rates to the marketplace, albeit with less variability over the life of the loan.
In his address, Alexander, the top Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension (HELP) committee and a former secretary of education under former President George H.W. Bush, pledged that Republicans would "work hard" to bridge their differences with the president before the end of the month.
But while "we may be in agreement on student loans, but we have a major disagreement about who should be in charge of our 100,000 public schools that educate 50 million American children," Alexander said. "To put it simply,