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Republicans today came out strongly against a proposal offered by Congressional Democrats to eviscerate the private sector’s role in helping families pay for college. Rep. John Kline (R-MN), the House Education and Labor Committee’s Senior Republican Member, criticized the legislation as a mockery of fiscal responsibility that is designed to permanently eliminate private capital from the student lending system and transform the U.S. Department of Education into a behemoth, bureaucratic bank.

“Democrats have been intent on pushing private capital out of student lending for more than a decade. Those efforts have failed in the past because students and schools prefer the private sector flexibility and innovation that simply cannot be matched by a cold federal bureaucracy,” said Kline. “Rather than capitalizing on a global financial collapse to press a partisan agenda, Democrats ought to be focusing on ways to improve the system and maintain an efficient public-private partnership that leverages private capital to help students gain access to college.”

The legislation proposed by Democrats is expected to move through a process known as “budget reconciliation,” a procedural tactic that limits debate in the Senate on legislation with the express purpose of reducing the federal deficit. However, Republicans noted, rather than focusing on deficit reduction, the legislation creates and invests in entitlement programs that will require billions in additional taxpayer funding when the temporary savings under the bill run out.

“Although Democrats have cloaked this proposal in the garb of fiscal responsibility, in truth it is little more than an entitlement spending spree taxpayers will be forced to reckon with for decades to come,” said Kline.

 

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