FOXNews.com: GOP, Obama in Student Loan Battle

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GOP, Obama in Student Loan Battle Apr 26th 2012, 21:43 President Obama's push to hold down interest rates on federal student loans has rapidly turned into an election-year standoff -- as congressional Republicans counter-punch with their own debt-relief plan and accuse the president of exploiting the issue for his reelection campaign.  The latest GOP play has been to call on the president to reimburse taxpayers for this week's college tour, where he touted his student loan plan.  House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday the president's trip to three big universities in swing states were obvious campaign stops and that his efforts to make the loan rate a campaign issue is "pathetic." Boehner said it makes the most powerful office in the world look "smaller." "The emperor has no clothes," Boehner, R-Ohio, said ahead of a House vote Friday on the issue. House Republicans have introduced their own loan-extension bill, and propose paying for it with money from the federal health care overhaul. The plan would extend the 3.4 percent rate for one year on the undergraduate Stafford Direct Loans and cost $5.9 billion. The rate would revert back to 6.8 percent without intervention. The GOP's Student Interest Rate Reduction Act would take some of the estimated $9 billion Democrats diverted from college financial aid funding in 2010 to pay for the president's health care law and apply the money as a stopgap measure to prevent the rate increase. The money, more specifically, created the Prevention and Public Health Fund for prevention, wellness and public-health activities. It is administered by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, who has full discretion on how to spend the money. But the Obama administration appeared to reject the Republicans' proposal.  Sebelius testified Thursday on Capitol Hill that the GOP plan to strip the fund would "doom future generations to pay higher and higher health bills and get mediocre results." White House spokesman Nick Papas told Fox News the administration is not in favor of taking funds out of the president's health care law to pay for this student loan deal. So even if the House passes this Friday, both sides will still be far from a deal. "This is no time to re-fight old political battles," Papas said. "We should be able to work together to find offsets that don't penalize middle-class families or undermine efforts to help more Americans stay healthy." Republicans have also argued Obama's economic policies have resulted in roughly 50 percent of recent college graduates in America either unemployed or underemployed -- in part because the health care law is making it harder for small businesses to hire new workers. Boehner's suggestion that the president reimburse his travel expenses followed a similar letter Wednesday from the Republican National Committee to the Government Accountability Office. "Throughout his administration, but particularly in recent weeks, President Obama has been passing off campaign travel as 'official events,' thereby allowing taxpayers, rather than his campaign, to pay for his reelection efforts,'' wrote committee Chairman Reince Priebus. The White House, though, described the trips as part of Obama's "official responsibility" to hear from students and discuss how to stop interest rates from doubling in July. At one the college stops, the University of Iowa, Obama indirectly misquoted GOP Rep. Todd Akin, also a Senate candidate. "You've got one member of Congress who compared these student loans, I am not kidding here, to a stage three cancer of socialism.Stage three cancer.I don't know where to start. What are you talking about?" Akin, R-Mo., was quotes in a local newspaper as saying, "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." Akin said later: "With all due respect, the president misquoted me.  I was not saying that student loans are a cancer.I referred to the policies where there is a government takeover of private industries." I suspect the president was given a misquotation of what I actually said, but I am sure we have a fundamental disagreement on the role of government and what constitutes socialism regarding current public policy."

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