July 12, 2007 1:50PM # Takeover Accomplished! By [Neal McCluskey](https://www.cato.org/people/neal-mccluskey) --- SHARE Yesterday, Democrats made good on their promise to transform the U.S. House of Representatives from what they said had been a wholly-owned subsidiary of student lending companies under Republicans, into a wholly owned subsidiary of middle- and upper-middle-class freeloaders under them. By a 273 to 149 vote, the House passed the [College Cost Reduction Act of 2007](http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_bills&docid=f:h2669eh.txt.pdf). Its good side is that it would cut several subsidies to lenders in federal loan programs, supposedly saving about $19 billion. The bad part is how it would use those savings. If enacted, the bill would modestly increase Pell Grants – which is not good news if you dislike taxpayer-dollar giveaways, though at least Pell is somewhat geared toward the truly needy – but would focus most benefits on loan programs utilized much more by the financially able. (See table 5 [of this report](http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2005/2005163.pdf) to see loan utilization by family income.) Indeed, the bill would cut in half – to a tiny 3.4 percent in five years – interest rates on subsidized student loans, and offer $5,000 in loan forgiveness to public servants ranging from police all the way to – get this – prosecutors! That is, it would offer $5,000 until those people had been in their jobs for ten years, at which point the entire remainder of their loans would go bye-bye, eaten by taxpayers who themselves get, approximately, nothing out of this bill. Needless to say, professional advocates for college kids with huge senses of entitlement – like [these guys](http://www.uspirg.org/higher-education), [these folks](http://www.usstudents.org/p.asp?WebPage_ID=7), and [this gal](http://anyakamenetz.blogspot.com/) – are ecstatic about this transfer from one group of thieves to another. As for me, I’m just sorry that it’s too late for poor, common-good-obsessed prosecutors like [this guy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Nifong) to have his loans forgiven. Oh, and [this famous public servant](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_McCoy), too. ##### Related Tags [Education](https://www.cato.org/education), [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy), [Center for Educational Freedom](https://www.cato.org/center-educational-freedom) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).