House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) Claims Student Loan Reform Will ‘Eliminate Every Bank In The Country’

This weekend, Democrats plan to vote on their health care reform reconciliation package, which also includes student loan reform. The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA), which would cut billions of dollars in senseless subsidies to private student lenders, passed the House last year. As of yesterday, it has a corresponding senate counterpart, which will be included in the reconciliation bill.

Currently, the federal government gives billions of dollars to student lenders to originate loans, and then guarantees loan repayment up to 97 percent, so the lenders are essentially useless middlemen that aren't exposed to any of the loan risk. This is corporate welfare at its finest. So in order to build opposition to the bill, both the lenders and Republicans in Congress have been borrowing a tactic from the health care debate by falsely characterizing student loan reform as a "Washington takeover" of lending.

But House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) took this a step further last night, saying that student loan reform would actually "eliminate every bank in the country and all student loan lenders," replacing them with the government:

Well, if you look at this student loan provision in there, they eliminate every bank in the country and all private student loan lenders so the government can do it instead.

rest at http://thinkprogress.org/2010/03/19/boehner-eliminate-bank/