Justin's Political Corner
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) compared efforts to regulate the for-profit college industry to the Holocaust during a speech Tuesday. Speaking at the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, Foxx invoked a famous Holocaust maxim in order to defend for-profit colleges against increased scrutiny. “They came for the for-profits, and I didn’t speak up,” the North Carolina congresswoman said.
Even if her choice of words is shocking, her willingness to stand up for the industry is of little surprise. Foxx is heavily-financed by the for-profit college industry. As the Center for Responsive Politics reported, “In her first year on the [Higher Education and Workforce Training] subcommittee, Foxx picked up at least $48,668 from PACs or individuals affiliated with for-profit colleges.”
Though Foxx is readily willing to advocate on behalf of an industry that saddles students with debt and leaves them with few employment prospects, she paradoxically dislikes people who take out student loans. Said Foxx on a radio show last year, “I have very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because there’s no reason for that.” In fact, many of the students with such large amounts of debt can trace their troubles to the fact that largely unregulated for-profit colleges are extraordinarily expensive.
Kevin Drum at Mother Jones: Romney-Ryan’s Real Poverty Plan: Soak the Poor
So what would Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan do for the poor and the working class if they were elected? Let’s recap:
- They would allow the payroll tax holiday to expire. This would immediately raise taxes on everyone, and would hit the working poor especially hard.
- They would repeal Obamacare, which would immediately kick about 17 million low-income earners and their family members off of Medicaid.
- In addition, they want to block grant Medicaid and cap its growth. In some states, this wouldn’t have a big immediate impact. In other states, conservative governors and legislatures would use their newfound authority to limit enrollments and cut benefits substantially. Over time, all states would have to cut enrollments dramatically, probably by another 15-20 million within a decade.
- If they pursue the cuts outlined in Paul Ryan’s budget plan, they would cut funding for SNAP (food stamps) by more than $100 billion over the next decade. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that this would reduce enrollment in the program by at least 8 million people.
- They would cut funding for Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health organizations. This would especially hurt poor women, since they don’t have the resources to pay for services at full-cost clinics.
- They would cut the college tax credit, the child tax credit, and the earned-income tax credit. All of these are programs designed to help the working poor.
1. Romney and Ryan would eliminate health care for 31 million people who are poor or disabled. Medicaid, which helps poor Americans, some seniors, and children afford health care, is right in the crosshairs of Paul Ryan’s House budget. He proposed cutting $1.4 trillion from the program, a move that would kick about 11 million people off Medicaid over the course of ten years. The Romney-Ryan plan is even worse, and is estimated to force about 44 million people off the program.
2. Ryan considers Social Security a “Ponzi Scheme.” In the Fall of 2011, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme,” and Paul Ryan agreed. Ryan wants to privatize the program.
3. 62% of Ryan’s budget cuts come from programs that benefit low-income Americans.Ryan’s budget proposes “$5.3 trillion in nondefense budget cuts.” 62 percent of the reductions would come from programs that specifically help low-income Americans:
4. Ryan voted for future defense cuts he now blames on Obama. Though Ryan claims Obama somehow orchestrated the sequester, a series of across-the-board spending cuts triggered if Congress can’t produce a better plan, the VP pick himself was a supporter of the mechanism. Not only did he vote for legislation to establish it, he peddled the plan to his Republican colleagues and proposed a similar initiative in 2004.
8. Ryan’s budget included the same $716 billion in Medicare savings included in Obamacare.The $716 billion that Obamacare takes out of Medicare will almost definitely come up in tomorrow’s debate. Ryan has claimed that Obama “raided” Medicare to pay for his health care reform. In fact, Ryan wants to make Medicare a voucher program and proposed taking the same cuts out of Medicare in his budget. But whereas Obamacare uses those funds to eliminate fraud and increase efficiency, Ryan proposed taking that money to pay down the deficit.
9.Ryan supported economic stimulus under Bush. If he’s going to follow the lead of his running mate, Ryan will invoke Obama’s stimulus plan, the Recovery Act, as failed legislation that wasted taxpayer money. But when George Bush was president, Ryan was supportive of a stimulus, and actually made a rousing case for infusing the economy with money, saying that it helped create jobs.
7. Ryan wants to kick 1 million students off of Pell Grants. As part of his budget, Ryan proposed cutting Pell Grants for nearly 1 million college students. Seventy four percent of Pell Grant recipients in 2011 came from families with incomes of $30,000 or less. There is no evidence that these cuts will curb rising college costs.
10. Ryan used to supports a key aspect of Obamacare. Ryan will likely say at the debate that the Affordable Care Act is government overreach. In fact, he might even invoke “death panels,” as he has done at recent town halls. But Ryan proposed something extremely similar to these so-called “death panels” in 2009 — twice. In December of 2010, Ryan also asked the Department of Health and Human Services for an Obamacare health care grant “for the Kenosha Community Health Center, Inc to develop a new facility in Racine, Wisconsin, an area within Ryan’s district.”
11. Ryan opposes abortion access for rape victims. When it comes to abortion rights, Ryan is among the most extreme anti-abortion members of Congress. He believes rape victimsshouldn’t have access to abortions and co-sponsored a “personhood” amendment that would have defined a fertilized egg as a human, thus outlawing not just abortion but also in-vitro fertilization and some forms of contraception.
12. Ryan supports a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. Ryan is vehemently opposed to marriage equality for same-sex couples. He has twice voted to amend the constitution to that effect, supported a same-sex marriage ban in his home state, and claimed that preventing same-sex couples from getting married was a “universal human value.”
(via ‘Legitimate Rape’ Stars In New Ad Supporting McCaskill In Missouri | TPM2012)
Just as national Republicans on Wednesday opened the door to supporting Rep. Todd Akin in the Missouri Senate race once again, a super PAC affiliated with EMILY’s List and SEIU are preparing to bombard the Show Me State with the remark that made Republicans recoil in horror in the first place.
TPM obtained an early look at television ad by Women Vote, the independent expenditure arm of EMILY’s List. The ad will run across Missouri starting Thursday with a $1 million buy co-funded by Women Vote and SEIU.
The “legitimate rape” quote that made Akin a household name in August is the first line of the spot. From there, the ad runs through a laundry list of other Akin views Democrats have often used to cast him as extreme.
McCaskill has run her own spot using the “legitimate rape” line, which Akin has apologized for in a TV ad of his own.
Accepting his party’s renomination for president at the Democratic National Convention Thursday night, Barack Obama zeroed in on the top policy goals he will seek to accomplish in a second term.
The Obama campaign issued a white paper sketching out — in some areas ambiguously — the policy prescriptions for a total of nine ambitious goals, three of which the document prioritized.
1) Create one million manufacturing jobs over the next four years
Obama aims to accomplish this by pushing for comprehensive tax reform that includes lower rates on domestic manufacturers and an additional credit for businesses that return jobs to the United States. The plan would enhance job training by investing in community colleges and aid for students. The money spent would be recovered by closing tax loopholes elsewhere.
2) Cut oil imports in half by 2020
Obama’s new energy policy would enhance oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic by easing up the leasing and review process. It involves doubling fuel efficiency standards, expanding the use of ethanol and biofuels and promoting clean energy sources — although the policy paper was light on how.
“If you choose this path,” the president said, “we can cut our oil imports in half by 2020 and support more than 600,000 new jobs in natural gas alone.”
“And yes, my plan will continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet - because climate change is not a hoax.”
3) Halve the growth of college tuition costs over the next decade
Obama says he’ll push to cut the skyrocketing rate of growth of college tuition in half over 10 years — a highly ambitious goal. His administration aims to accomplish this by creating a “Race to the Top-like initiative” to reward states that find ways to reduce tuition costs, promote recognition of transfer credits and strip funding from colleges that “cannot or will not offer students a good value and an affordable price.”
h/t: Sahil Kapur at TPM
An untold number of Americans first met Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) — the GOP’s nominee to unseat Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) — on Sunday, after he falsely claimed that women have a natural defense against becoming pregnant from what he called a “legitimate rape.”
Though the outlandish claim represents a fairly common view in the pro-life movement and the GOP, the backlash was so fast and severe that some GOPers are calling for Akin to abandon his candidacy, so somebody less tainted can take his place.
Student Loans
In April, Akin cited a law Democrats passed in 2010 that saves billions of dollars by preventing private banks from profiting, risk free, on federally backed student loans as an example of the notion that “America has got the equivalent of stage three cancer of socialism, because the federal government is tampering in all kind of stuff it has no business tampering in.”
When offered the chance to clarify, he declined, saying “I called a spade a spade.”
Social Security
During a CSPAN appearance on March 2011, Akin raised strong objections to one of the nation’s most popular federal support programs. “Social Security, through the years, for many many people, has been a terrible investment. It’s really a tax is all it is. Social Security is a tax. The government is taking the tax — there’s more money coming in than going out — and we spend it. That’s not responsible. I don’t like it. I didn’t design Social Security. It was — it actually came from Bismark. FDR put it in place.”
First Amendment
In June 2011, Akin told Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, that “the heart of liberalism really is a hatred for God and a belief that government should replace God.”
Marital Rape
In 1991, as a state legislator, Akin questioned whether anti-marital rape legislation might be used “in a real messy divorce as a tool and a legal weapon to beat up on the husband.” He ultimately voted for the bill.
Civil and Voting Rights
Akin recently claimed that elections “historically have always been a state thing.” Without expressing opposition to the Civil Rights Act and other federal protections for ethnic minorities, Akin noted “I think we’ve come a very long way from those days,” adding, “I think we need to make sure that everybody has a right to vote — once,” a transparent nod to the inaccurate notion that voter impersonation fraud is a persistent problem that requires legal restrictions on voting.
School Lunches
In 2010, he was one of 13 to vote against expressing support for the goals and ideals of the National School Lunch Program.
Missing And Exploited Children
In 2003, he and 13 other Republicans voted against a five year reauthorization of a law that provides support for missing and exploited children.
In 2005, he was one of 52 congressmen to oppose legislation to create a national sex offender registry, compel convicted sex offenders to register, and impose mandatory sentences for convicted child molesters.
Anti-Abortion Violence
When he first ran for Congress in 2000 he fell under scrutiny for writing a 1995 letter of support to the 1st Missouri Volunteers — a fringe, anti-abortion private militia.
h/t: Brian Beutler at TPM
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) resurrected Rep. Todd Akin’s (R-Mo.) infamous comparison of student loans to stage three cancer in a new ad released by her campaign on Tuesday.
The ad, titled “Stage 3,” features Missouri students reacting to Akin’s remark, made during a policy debate in April 2012, that “America has got the equivalent of the stage three cancer of socialism because the federal government is tampering in all kinds of stuff it has no business tampering in.”
Student loans “make all the difference to students like me,” says one student in the ad. “Missouri students deserve better,” another student says.
The commercial, which airs statewide, is part of McCaskill’s bid to paint Akin, McCaskill’s challenger for her Senate seat, as an extreme conservative. It comes just one day after the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee challenged Akin over his support for the privatization of Social Security and how that might impact seniors’ retirement plans.
Akin responded to the DSCC by issuing his own ad Tuesday morning, knocking McCaskill over her support for the president’s health care law.
H/T: HuffPo
![10 Things to know about Paul Ryan, via MoveOn.org:
1. His economic plan would cost America 1 million jobs in the first year.Ryan’s proposed budget would cripple the economy. He’d slash spending deeply, which would not only slow job growth, but shock the economy and cost 1 million of us our jobs in 2013 alone and kill more than 4 million jobs by the end of 2014.[1]
2. He’d kill Medicare. He’d replace Medicare with vouchers for retirees to purchase insurance, eliminating the guarantee of health care for seniors and putting them at the mercy of the private insurance industry. That could amount to a cost increase of more than $5,900 by 2050, leaving many seniors broke or without the health care they need. He’d also raise the age of eligibility to 67.[2]
3. He’d pickpocket the middle class to line the pockets of the rich. His tax plan is Robin Hood in reverse. He wants to cut taxes by $4.6 trillion over the next decade, but only for corporations and the rich, like giving families earning more than $1 million a year a $300,000 tax cut. And to pay for them, he’d raise taxes on middle- and lower-income households and butcher social service programs that help middle- and working-class Americans.[3]
4. He’s an anti-choice extremist. Ryan co-sponsored an extremist anti-choice bill, nicknamed the ‘Let Women Die Act,’ that would have allowed hospitals to deny women emergency abortion care even if their lives were at risk. And he co-sponsored another bill that would criminalize some forms of birth control, all abortions, and in vitro fertilization.[4]
5. He’d dismantle Social Security. Ironically, Ryan used the Social Security Survivors benefit to help pay for college, but he wants to take that possibility away from future generations. He agrees with Rick Perry’s view that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme” and he supported George W. Bush’s disastrous proposal to privatize Social Security.[5]
6. He’d eliminate Pell grants for more than 1 million low-income students.His budget plan cuts the Pell Grant program by $200 billion, which could mean a loss of educational funding for 1 million low-income students.[6]
7. He’d give $40 billion in subsidies to Big Oil. His budget includes oil tax breaks worth $40 billion, while cutting “billions of dollars from investments to develop alternative fuels and clean energy technologies that would serve as substitutes for oil.”[7]
8. He’s another Koch-head politician. Not surprisingly, the billionaire oil-baron Koch brothers are some of Ryan’s biggest political contributors. And their company, Koch industries, is Ryan’s biggest energy-related donor. The company’s PAC and affiliated individuals have given him $65,500 in donations.[8]
9. He opposes gay rights. Ryan has an abysmal voting record on gay rights. He’s voted to ban adoption by gay couples, against same-sex marriage, and against repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell.” He also voted against the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which President Obama signed into law in 2009.[9]
10. He thinks an “I got mine, who cares if you’re okay” philosophy is admirable. For many years, Paul Ryan devoted himself to Ayn Rand’s philosophy of selfishness as a virtue. It has shaped his entire ethic about whom he serves in public office. He even went as far as making his interns read her work.[10]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8rm5uXlEf1r1vqpco1_500.jpg)
10 Things to know about Paul Ryan, via MoveOn.org:
1. His economic plan would cost America 1 million jobs in the first year.Ryan’s proposed budget would cripple the economy. He’d slash spending deeply, which would not only slow job growth, but shock the economy and cost 1 million of us our jobs in 2013 alone and kill more than 4 million jobs by the end of 2014.[1]
2. He’d kill Medicare. He’d replace Medicare with vouchers for retirees to purchase insurance, eliminating the guarantee of health care for seniors and putting them at the mercy of the private insurance industry. That could amount to a cost increase of more than $5,900 by 2050, leaving many seniors broke or without the health care they need. He’d also raise the age of eligibility to 67.[2]
3. He’d pickpocket the middle class to line the pockets of the rich. His tax plan is Robin Hood in reverse. He wants to cut taxes by $4.6 trillion over the next decade, but only for corporations and the rich, like giving families earning more than $1 million a year a $300,000 tax cut. And to pay for them, he’d raise taxes on middle- and lower-income households and butcher social service programs that help middle- and working-class Americans.[3]
4. He’s an anti-choice extremist. Ryan co-sponsored an extremist anti-choice bill, nicknamed the ‘Let Women Die Act,’ that would have allowed hospitals to deny women emergency abortion care even if their lives were at risk. And he co-sponsored another bill that would criminalize some forms of birth control, all abortions, and in vitro fertilization.[4]
5. He’d dismantle Social Security. Ironically, Ryan used the Social Security Survivors benefit to help pay for college, but he wants to take that possibility away from future generations. He agrees with Rick Perry’s view that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme” and he supported George W. Bush’s disastrous proposal to privatize Social Security.[5]
6. He’d eliminate Pell grants for more than 1 million low-income students.His budget plan cuts the Pell Grant program by $200 billion, which could mean a loss of educational funding for 1 million low-income students.[6]
7. He’d give $40 billion in subsidies to Big Oil. His budget includes oil tax breaks worth $40 billion, while cutting “billions of dollars from investments to develop alternative fuels and clean energy technologies that would serve as substitutes for oil.”[7]
8. He’s another Koch-head politician. Not surprisingly, the billionaire oil-baron Koch brothers are some of Ryan’s biggest political contributors. And their company, Koch industries, is Ryan’s biggest energy-related donor. The company’s PAC and affiliated individuals have given him $65,500 in donations.[8]
9. He opposes gay rights. Ryan has an abysmal voting record on gay rights. He’s voted to ban adoption by gay couples, against same-sex marriage, and against repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell.” He also voted against the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which President Obama signed into law in 2009.[9]
10. He thinks an “I got mine, who cares if you’re okay” philosophy is admirable. For many years, Paul Ryan devoted himself to Ayn Rand’s philosophy of selfishness as a virtue. It has shaped his entire ethic about whom he serves in public office. He even went as far as making his interns read her work.[10]
Is Todd Akin Mainstream? (Social Security, Minimum Wage, and Student Loans) (by ClaireMcCaskill2012)
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) shot back at House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday, claiming that Pelosi’s move to connect a GOP student loan plan to the so-called Republican war on women was “pathetic.”
“She wants to continue this fiction that every Democrat messenger is trying to put forward, which is there’s a war on women,” Bachmann told Fox Business Network’s Neil Cavuto. “There is no war on women. There’s never been a war on women.”
On Thursday, Pelosi lambasted the recently announced Republican bill, which would keep student loan rates at their current levels by pulling money from a public health fund included in President Barack Obama’s health care law. Democrats had originally proposed covering the estimated $6 billion cost by closing a tax loophole that lets certain wealthy people avoid paying Medicare taxes, but Republicans countered by targeting what House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) called an Obamacare “slush fund.”
H/T: Huffington Post
If you’re young and you want to start your own business, Mitt Romney’s has some advice from you: Borrow money from your parents. At a “lecture” for students at Otterbein University in Ohio today, Mitt Romney told students that, his friend, Jimmy John, started a business by borrowing $20,000 from his parents at a low interest rate. Romney suggested anyone in the audience could do the same:
This kind of devisiveness, this attack of success, is very different than what we’ve seen in our country’s history. We’ve always encouraged young people: Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business.
Rep. Todd Akin is in a primary race to challenge Sen. Claire McCaskill for her Senate seat in Missouri. Akin is also a hardcore Americans For Prosperity corporate candidate and all-around not-nice guy. But even for a not-nice corporate guy, this comment of his at a recent debate was so deeply out of touch with reality that it deserves some attention, even from the President.
Here’s what he said:
America has got the equivalent of the stage three cancer of socialism because the federal government is tampering in all kinds of stuff it has no business tampering in. So first, to answer your question precisely, what the Democrats get rid of the private student loans and take it all over by the government was wrong, it was a lousy bill, and that’s why I voted no.The government needs to get its nose out of the education business.
Please take note of the following facts which Akin doesn’t care about but which the rest of us should:
- Education is not a business. It’s how civilized countries invest in remaining civilized. I repeat: Education is NOT now, nor should it ever be, a business.
- Federally guaranteed student loans were the brainchild of the Republican God of Economics, Milton Friedman. Friedman argued that there was too much risk to private lenders, therefore:
But whatever the reason, there is clearly here an imperfection of the market that has led to underinvestment in human capital and that justifies government intervention on grounds both of “natural monopoly,” insofar as the obstacle to the development of such investment has been administrative costs, and of improving the operation of the market, insofar as it has been simply market frictions and rigidities.
[…]
A governmental body could offer to finance or help finance the training of any individual who could meet minimum quality standards by making available not more than a limited sum per year for not more than a specified number of years, provided it was spent on securing training at a recognized institution. The individual would agree in return to pay to the government in each future year x per cent of his earnings in excess of y dollars for each $1,000 that he gets in this way.
Clearly Akin has only paid lip service to the Great God of Privatization Economics, Friedman instead of actually bothering to see what he said about student loans. It was Friedman’s idea that found its way into law and birthed federally guaranteed student loans.
The risk on those loans hasn’t changed since Friedman’s time. On the contrary, it’s higher today than it was then because of the tight job market.
- Public education is a core value in this country and has been since the days of the Founding Fathers. In 1785, John Adams wrote: “The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves.”
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) took on a unique enemy during a radio interview yesterday: people with student loans.
Though many politicians sympathize with those who are saddled with exorbitant student debt, Foxx, who chairs the House subcommittee on higher education, had a different take. Appearing on G. Gordon Liddy’s radio show, the North Carolina congresswoman recounted her own experience paying for college, where she worked her way through and graduated after seven years. Foxx then pointed to her own experience as justification for why she has “very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt.” “There’s no reason for that,” she concluded:
FOXX: I went through school, I worked my way through, it took me seven years, I never borrowed a dime of money. He borrowed a little bit because we both were totally on our own when we went to college, totally. […] I have very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because there’s no reason for that. We live in an opportunity society and people are forgetting that. I remind folks all the time that the Declaration of Independence says “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” You don’t have it dumped in your lap.
From the 04.12.2012 edition of Radio America’s The G. Gordon Liddy Show:
Despite Foxx’s implication, these loans are not taken out frivolously. They are taken out because of the soaring cost of college.
