Free Republic

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will use a tour of three election battleground states next week to push Congress to prevent the doubling of interest rates on federal student loans -- an effort aimed at re-energizing his support among younger voters. Obama will speak at universities in North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa, the White House said on Friday. All three states are considered critical to his re-election chances, and the youth vote is one of his key constituencies. The two-day trip is part of a campaign by the Obama administration to get Congress to extend low interest rates on...

The Democratic Party is springing a five-year-old political trap that may help President Barack Obama win support from middle-class parents and young voters. Their trap is the scheduled election-year doubling of interest-rates on government-provided student loans. The pre-planned doubling forces GOP politicians to either approve a Democratic measure that extends the low interest rates or else face protest from millions of students and their middle-class parents. Many GOP legislators dislike the subsidized interest rate because it inflates education costs while delivering a disguised subsidy to the Democrats’ political allies in the education industry. The trap “kinda makes sense,” said Mark...