Note to Congress: Grow up and get to work on student loans

There they go again. Those ras- cals on the playground of federal lawmaking that we once proudly called the august U.S. Congress are proving once again they still haven’t learned to play nice together.

Just as they have done with such strategic issues as postal reform, U.S. budgeting and economic recovery, this time those mischievous big boys and girls in the red elephant and blue donkey clubs flaunt their stubbornness on a matter of utmost importance: preventing a doubling from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent in interest rates for federal Stafford student loans beginning July 1.

And just as the 212th Congress has done on so many other playing fields, that stubbornness translates into nothingness. In this case, nothing will not do for the millions of U.S. college students and families who depend on stable federally-backed loans to pursue the American dream of a college education.

DISCORD ON FUNDING EXTENSION

In the current schoolyard skirmish, the U.S. Senate on Tuesday rejected a motion offered by Democrats that would have paid for the $6 billion cost of extending for one year the low-interest loans by closing tax loopholes on shareholders of big corporations, particularly those in the lucrative oil industry. That stalemate came after a similar snit in the playhouse of U.S. representatives, where a Republican initiative to finance the $6 billion cost would come from a fund established by the 2010 health-care reform law to help states and communities prevent obesity, heart disease, diabetes, cancer and infectious diseases and other maladies. The vast majority of congressional Democrats and President Obama will have no part of that, thank you.

Despite the singular silliness of such time-consuming and juvenile sniping, teasing and game-playing, virtually everyone in Congress – blue donkeys and red elephants alike – are adamant they do not want to sucker punch American college students with a 100 percent interest hike 50 days from now.

That’s why all in Congress must work together — like adults — toward a more neutral source for financing the extension. Though the Democrats’ proposal to close a tax loophole for the super-rich carries more merit than the Republicans’ plan to torpedo a key portion of the much maligned “Obamacare,” clearly a new less partisan path must be charted to achieve success.

VOICES OF REASON EMERGE

En route to that success, our federal lawmakers would do well to listen to the voices of reason from several truly respectable American leaders.

They should listen to U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, for example. The senior senator from Ohio stands out as one strong source of maturity amid two chambers of childish shenanigans. Brown, sponsor of the derailed Stop the Student Loan Interest Rate Hike Act, said in a USA Today opinion column this week: “With college costs climbing, and more jobs demanding higher education, we should be clearing barriers to college rather than creating them. Student loan debt has reached nearly $1 trillion — exceeding credit cards and auto loans. The average Ohio student graduates from a four-year college with nearly $27,000 in loans.”

Congress should also listen to the plea of Cynthia Anderson, president of Youngstown State University: “The doubling of the interest rates would present a hardship to the nearly 8 million students throughout the nation who hold Stafford loans, including about 75 percent of Youngstown State University students. I join with my colleagues across the state in asking Sens. [Rob] Portman and Brown to assist us in continuing to support our nation’s youth by maintaining present interest rates on these loans.”

Perhaps most importantly, Congress should listen to the voices of college students themselves. Andy MacCracken is associate director of the National Campus Leadership Council, which represents more than 2.5 million college students nationally. He puts the impact of congressional do-nothingness on student loans succinctly: “The amount of debt we’re accumulating just to get through school seriously threatens our generation’s prosperity.”

Of course, student loan debt is not the only critical issue threatening the future financial viability of higher education in America. Lawmakers on both state and federal levels should be looking at ways to lessen debts by lessening the skyrocketing cost of college. Those are issues that some in Congress vow they will tackle once this one-year stopgap loan stabilization is preserved.

We will hold them to that long-term promise. But in the short term, action is needed, and action is needed now to extend the lower Stafford interest rate. That means mature representatives and senators of all political stripes must hunker down, grow up and get down to work. Specifically, they must craft a bipartisan compromise and do so before the start of their much-beloved summer vacation. In so doing, they at last may serve as a role model for this nation’s younger generation, not a laughingstock of government ineptitude.