Florida senators voted along party lines Tuesday as Republicans blocked a tax-raising Democratic bill that would have driven up Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes for some -- in exchange for keeping interest down on federal student loans.
Bad bill, insists Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Miami, who sided with the GOP in the 52-45 vote. Congress should prevent the loan rate hike and pay for it by targeting the very root of this increase -- a provision in the 2010 federal health care law that raids student aid to the tune of $9 billion in order to pay for other parts of Obamacare, Rubio wrote in a FOX News editorial on Tuesday.
The vote on the bill fell far short of the 60 needed by the Democrats to keep the Republicans from an ability to launch into an election-year filibuster.
Both parties support keeping the interest rates on the loans for low- and middle-income students from leaping to 6.8 percent from 3.4 percent on July 1.But in an effort to score some partisan points before the fall elections, Democrats offered up a bill that singled out for more taxation top shareholders of private-corporation stock. Most senators predicted the bill was unlikely to succeed Tuesday.
Republicans have countered that instead of further increasing the deficit, money to cover student loans should come from money set aside for the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, more commonly referred to as Obamacare.
Said Rubio, Since this problem is of President Obamas own making, we should clean up this latest Obamacare mess by ending this slush fund and applying the savings to prevent the upcoming rate increase.
President Barack Obama has threatened to veto any effort by Republican senators to eliminate the preventive health care fund.
According to the Sun-Sentinel, an increase in the interest rate on the loan would mean an average increase of $979 for the more than 450,000 Florida students due to be paying the loan July 1.
Reach Jim Turner at jturner@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 215-9889.
