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Boner wants to cut health care to pay for avoiding student loan rate hike
WASHINGTON -- Republicans and Democrats on Wednesday laid down competing, partisan visions of how to maintain affordable student loan rates, with the GOP aiming to eliminate a health care measure and Democrats looking to tax people like Newt Gingrich.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said that Democrats, by accusing the GOP of seeking to let student loan rates double to 6.8 percent in July, were trying to create a phony campaign issue. He argued that both parties want to help young Americans, but then proposed paying for the estimated $6 billion cost by killing a provision in the health care reform law.
"We will pay for this by taking money for this from one of the slush funds in the president's health care law," Boehner told reporters on Capitol Hill, announcing that the House would vote on his plan Friday.
He was referring to the Prevention and Public Health Fund, the purpose of which is to encourage people to take better care of themselves, thereby saving money down the road. The fund is one of the most popular targets for the GOP, and it is already set for elimination in the House budget plan at an estimated savings of $11.9 billion over 10 years.
Democrats in the Senate offered their own competing plan to help the 7.4 million students who would be affected if the loan rates rose. They would close what they dubbed the "Gingrich/Edwards Loophole," which lets certain well-off professionals avoid Medicare taxes. If a lawyer or consultant, say, organizes as an S-corporation, he can take a small portion of his earnings as salary -- on which he pays Medicare taxes -- and declare the rest to be profits of the corporation -- on which he does not pay Medicare taxes. Former House Speaker Gingrich and former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) have both benefited from the loophole. Gingrich saved $69,000 with that strategy in 2010.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said that Democrats, by accusing the GOP of seeking to let student loan rates double to 6.8 percent in July, were trying to create a phony campaign issue. He argued that both parties want to help young Americans, but then proposed paying for the estimated $6 billion cost by killing a provision in the health care reform law.
"We will pay for this by taking money for this from one of the slush funds in the president's health care law," Boehner told reporters on Capitol Hill, announcing that the House would vote on his plan Friday.
He was referring to the Prevention and Public Health Fund, the purpose of which is to encourage people to take better care of themselves, thereby saving money down the road. The fund is one of the most popular targets for the GOP, and it is already set for elimination in the House budget plan at an estimated savings of $11.9 billion over 10 years.
Democrats in the Senate offered their own competing plan to help the 7.4 million students who would be affected if the loan rates rose. They would close what they dubbed the "Gingrich/Edwards Loophole," which lets certain well-off professionals avoid Medicare taxes. If a lawyer or consultant, say, organizes as an S-corporation, he can take a small portion of his earnings as salary -- on which he pays Medicare taxes -- and declare the rest to be profits of the corporation -- on which he does not pay Medicare taxes. Former House Speaker Gingrich and former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) have both benefited from the loophole. Gingrich saved $69,000 with that strategy in 2010.
MORE...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/obama-student-loans-_n_1453599.html