April 20, 2012 08:29 PM UTC

GOP Congress vs. College Students

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• by: Colorado Pols

It’s a fight President Barack Obama is happy to pick, as the Washington Post reports:

President Obama will travel to college campuses in North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa next week to urge Congress to keep interest rates low on student loans, the White House announced Friday…

According to a White House fact sheet issued Friday, student loan rates for 7.4 million Americans will double on July 1 without congressional intervention to extend current rates. Without action, the higher rates would translate into $1,000 in additional debt each year for the average student, the fact sheet said.

Obama’s push will include an appearance by Education Secretary Arne Duncan at Friday’s White House briefing with Press Secretary Jay Carney; it will also feature a social-media campaign on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ using the hashtag #DontDoubleMyRate.

It’s tough to know what the Republican-controlled House will do with this in an election year, smacking as it does of the kind of “top-down solution” that won’t “create jobs.” Of course, you could respond that a little more money in student borrowers’ pockets would be good for the economy kind of like a tax cut, but as we learned with the payroll tax cut extension debate, Republicans just don’t see much value in tax cuts for people who don’t make enough to buy a yacht with it “benefit the economy.”

We’re not trying to be snarky, you’ll recall that’s, absent the yacht part, what they actually said.

Anyway, if we were giving the President political advice, this would definitely be on the short list of blows to strike. We expect that President Obama will carry the 18-24 year old demographic comfortably enough, but planting the flag this close to their wallets should help him run up the score.