John Tierney: “I filed a bill last week that would have lowered the interest rates, back at a time when the Republican budget would…”

“I filed a bill last week that would have lowered the interest rates, back at a time when the Republican budget would have let it double, back when the Speaker and the chairman of the Education Committee and the second-ranking Member of the Republican Party all voted to keep it at 6.8 percent. I filed a bill, and I found a way to pay for it. It was paid for by taking one tax credit from Big Oil that made $130 billion last year, one tax credit that they weren't originally intended to have even benefited from but had managed to sort of squeak their way into eventually. So there's a way to pay for it. Now, if you didn't agree with it, the Republicans didn't agree with it, then they could have found one that wasn't noxious, one that everybody could agree on. But instead, they finally came around to deciding that they wanted to lower the interest rates because they couldn't take the political heat when the President was out there talking to American families. And American parents and American students said, What are you doing? Why are you borrowing and giving oil companies $130 billion of profits plus tax credits when we could be having a way to make sure that our family members get the education they need to get a job and move forward in their lives? So the Republicans finally came along and said, Okay, we will lower the interest rates. We can't take the heat. But we are going to find a poison pill.…”