Buried In The Health Care Bill

Unless you read all 2,900+ pages of the so-called Health Care Reform Bill, you probably missed two Obama initiatives buried in piles of bureaucratic language. There has been an iota of attention in the media, but most have paid scant attention.

1. The Federal Government will assume full authority over student loans, beginning July 1. This has been a point of bitter contention between the Obama Administration and the banking industry. That helps explain why the administration decided to shove the legislation into the health bill. Banks and other private lenders, including Sallie Mae, will be cut out of the $30-$40 billion student loan business. The bank loans had been backed by the federal government. While the impact may not be felt directly by students, there are a couple of troubling unintended consequences. First, thousands of jobs will be lost at private lenders, including up to 2,500 at Sallie Mae. However, the government will have to hire thousands of workers to handle the higher volume of loans now originated in the private sector. Big government will get bigger and fatter. Secondly, the government will be able to set whatever criteria it chooses to make student loans. Do you really want Washington deciding who gets money to go to college?

2. The bill included $2.5 billion in funding for historically Black colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions. It is hard to be against federal funding of college education. However, it begs the question: what does this have to do with Health Care Reform? From the surgically repaired lips of Speaker Pelosi: "Education and Health Care have an affinity. They go together." Huh? The truth is that the funding was a payoff to the House Black Caucus which championed the Health Care Reform bill and rallied around the president during his darkest days when its passage appeared dim. If funding Black colleges is a good idea, why couldn't it have stood on its own as a separate piece of legislation? The answer is by sticking it in the bill the Black Caucus could rally support among its constituency by pointing out how the legislation would benefit minority colleges. Sleazy, sleazy, sleazy.

Those two provisions are examples of what has become the standard modus operandi for the Reid-Pelosi-Obama Trinity. Obfuscation and lack of transparency are hallmarks of everything they touch. According to the latest Gallup Polls, Reid and Pelosi have the highest negative numbers of any politicians in America. Based on Health Care Reform hijinks, is it any wonder?