Romney’s student debt chutzpah

[edcantor]

He slashed funding, hiked tuition and saddled Mass. students with loans. Now he promotes for-profit colleges

BY JOAN WALSH

You’ve got to hand it to Mitt Romney. For someone who’s usually as steadfast as a “perfectly lubricated weathervane,” in the words of former foe Jon Huntsman, sometimes he’s got a lot of brass. This week he released an ad blaming the student debt crisis on President Obama, when in fact out-of-control student loans were gobbling up graduates’ paychecks by the time Obama took office in 2009. In fact, Romney himself played a starring role in the crisis, cutting higher education funding and hiking tuition back when he was Massachusetts governor (or as he’d rather put it, during the lost years.)

Broadcast in New Hampshire, the swing state that also leads the nation in per capita student debt, the ad highlighted “the fact that the president has not been able to help students deal with this crushing debt,” according to Romney spokesman Ryan Williams. Unfortunately, the ad used footage of New Hampshire students complaining about their loan burden without their permission, and one of them happens to plan to vote for Obama. “Considering I am not a supporter of Mitt Romney, this is not exactly sitting well with me,” said Southern New Hampshire University sophomore Matt Raso. The campaign pulled the footage when a local television station objected, but Ryan Williams told the Associated Press that the campaign plans to run ads blaming the student loan crisis on Obama in other swing states.

That takes a kind of chutzpah Romney rarely exhibits. He won’t stand up to birther bully Donald Trump or the misogynist Rush Limbaugh, but he apparently has the cojones to blame student debt on Obama. We’ll see how it goes. In fact, American student debt is a scandal in which state and national lawmakers in both parties share some blame. But by far the lion’s share of responsibility for the debacle belongs to Republicans. The roots of the crisis go back to California Gov. Ronald Reagan, who imposed the first “fees” on the formerly free University of California system in 1968, declaring “the state should not subsidize intellectual curiosity.” As president, Reagan helped nationalize that disdain for well-funded public higher education in the 80s.

But it took a long roster of Republican governors to turn the problem into a crisis, and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney led the way a decade ago, dramatically slashing public higher education funding and hiking fees during his one term. According to the Boston Globe, fees and tuition jumped 63 percent at Massachusetts’ once-stellar system of public higher education from 2003 to 2007, as Romney slashed state funding year after year, for a total of $140 million, or 14 percent, in four years. Not surprisingly, average student debt in Massachusetts jumped 25 percent while Romney was governor. Between 2001 and 2011, tuition and fees have more than doubled at the state’s community colleges, state university and UMass campuses, but the bulk of the added burden piled up under Romney. Romney also wanted to spin off the flagship UMass-Amherst, and privatize three other colleges, including the medical school, a harbinger of what he says he’ll do as president. That agenda failed in Massachusetts, but it would be a shame to give him a second chance as president.

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http://www.salon.com/2012/05/30/romneys_student_debt_chutzpah/singleton//

[PDJane]

1. Ah, yes, there's the Friedmanite priniciples coming to the fore again.

Vulture capitalism strikes again.

[edcantor]

2. Romney Slams Obama on Student Loan Debt: Who is Right?

TYT taking this issue more in depth.