Increasing interest rates? NOT ON MY WATCH!

 

There seems to be a slightly brighter light at the end of the tunnel for those of us with student loans. On Friday June twenty ninth, Congress approved legislation that will affect most student’s lives for the next year.

 

With a 74-19 vote from our Senate and a 373-52 vote from our House of Representatives (which make up Congress, keep up with me here), there will no longer be an increase in federal subsidized loan interest rates for the next year.

 

WOO-HOO! Instead of your college loan interests increasing to a jaw dropping 6.8%, your interests will stay at a 3.4%, which doesn’t seem so bad anymore. Not only will this law affect Syracuse University undergraduates but it will also help 7.4 million other students who have Stafford loans.

 

President Barack Obama estimated that this law would help over 6 million students save an average 1,000 dollars in the next year.

 

Although this law will only be affective for the next year, Congress has already begun brainstorming ways to help keep this rate as low as possible when the law expires.

 

So as our President is working his ass off in office to try and help save your money from being taken right out of your pocket, try not to go spend all of your money at Chuck’s this weekend or at flip night Wednesday.

 

Being informed about your student loans will help you save in the future. We don’t want a bunch of poor SU alumni. That wouldn’t make us look so good.

 

-Chelsey Perry

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Barney Frank’s Retirement Signifies the End of an Era

Barney Frank has announced that he is retiring from Congress after 30 years of service to the United States and its citizens. For those of you who are unaware as to who Barney Frank is, he is one of the most well-known and prominent openly gay Jewish elected officials in the United States. Seriously, this guy is like the living, breathing embodiment of everything liberal. Only thing he needs now is two lesbian mothers to flesh it all out. But not to worry, we’ve got this guy, so all is well.

Also, unlike most infamously closeted gay elected officials who tend to run on ‘family values’ such as Phil Hinkle, who allegedly offered an 18 year old a bribe consisting of an iPad, Blackberry and cash to keep quiet, Frank has never been shy or quiet about his own orientation and who he is as a person.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others

To the delight of elementary school children and college frat boys everywhere, pizza can officially be considered a valid part of an everyday diet.

Congress declared pizza – or, more specifically, the tomato paste on pizza – a vegetable this past Monday, after it finalized a version of a spending bill that would reverse the Agriculture Department’s proposal of healthier school lunches.

Potatoes (read: french fries) were also on the edge of extinction in the Agriculture Department’s proposition for school lunches that would ultimately limit sodium intake and push children to consume more whole grains and actual vegetables.

Thank goodness for the Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee, who saw error in the Agriculture Department’s plan of keeping children healthy.

GOP Looks for Waste in New Stimulus Bill

Congressional Republicans face a tough road ahead of them for these next two years.  Until the 2010 mid-term elections, the GOP is handily outnumbered by Democrats in Congress, and has been stripped of their greatest asset.  You see, when a party is out of power as Republicans are now, and Democrats were from 2001-2006, it usually hopes for policy failure on the part of the opposition, and capitalizes on these missteps.  In the case of today’s political landscape, Republicans do not have such a luxury.

As we dip farther into one of our nation’s darkest economic hours, all Republicans can do is hope for success, because failure is no longer an option.