By Matt Hawes<\/p>\n
From Tim Carney’s latest piece in the Washington Examiner<\/em>:<\/p>\n The budget reconciliation bill being used as a sidecar to the Senate health care bill also contains a federal takeover of the student loan industry. Judging by preliminary data from the Congressional Budget Office, the student loan provisions are similar to those in the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act — a bill that passed the House this year, but faced a Senate filibuster.<\/p>\n The reconciliation version of the bill chops out much of the student aid, making the measure fairly profitable on paper. After all, government will now have a monopoly in an industry already being subsidized by other parts of government….<\/p>\n The CBO revealed Thursday the bill would “establish a new program for lenders who were chartered before July 1, 2009, and are owned by a state under the control of a board including the governor and offered guaranteed loans prior to June 30, 2010.”<\/p>\n That’s an oddly specific description of a financial institution. That’s because this program applies to exactly one lender: The Bank of North Dakota. The CBO explains, “Under the new program, these banks [sic] would be allowed to offer guaranteed student loans.” In other words, all student lenders would be killed by the budget reconciliation bill, except for the biggest one in the state of Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad.<\/p>\n This sort of game playing is the hallmark of health care reform, which has included backroom deals with the drug lobby, parliamentary innovation, and budget tricks to make Enron accountants envious….<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n