Clinton Warns Students of GOP’s Spending Plans

Launching a week of events designed to highlight the differences between the Administration and Republicans on education spending, President Clinton told several thousand students at Southern Illinois University here that the GOP majority in Congress wants to rob them of their futures.

Clinton cited proposed reductions in the rate of spending on student loans, grants and work-study programs as evidence that the Republican majority in Congress is “shortcutting the future” in its efforts to balance the budget.

“Do not be fooled by the smoke screen of balancing the budget,” Clinton told the students at an outdoor rally. “We don’t have to cut education to balance the budget. We don’t have to, and we shouldn’t.”

He said that the Republican budget would cut $36 billion over seven years from spending on education and training, eliminate the Americorps volunteer program and raise the cost of student loans.

Republicans immediately responded, branding Clinton’s assertions “a big lie” and “cheap politics” designed to scare students.

Concurrently, 47 top Administration officials left Washington for political appearances around the country this week to try to bolster Clinton’s education message in a blitz dubbed “back to school week.”

In his speech here and an earlier round-table discussion with a dozen students, Clinton laid particular stress on what he considers his most important education innovation: the 1993 creation of a direct student-loan program, which bypasses commercial banks and other middlemen to speed disbursement of funds.

Clinton asserted that the program had lowered interest rates, cut red tape and saved taxpayers $6.8 million in administrative costs.

Republicans are trying to cap the direct loan program and return some of the lucrative and low-risk lending business to commercial banks and private firms who distribute the loans and collect repayments.

The debate over student loans has come to symbolize much of what separates Clinton from congressional Republicans. It clearly sets out the philosophical difference over ways to accomplish the same goal, whether through a government-run program or incentives to private industry.

Republicans believe that the federal Department of Education has no business taking over a loan program that 700 private banks have run for decades. In fact, the GOP wants to abolish the department entirely.

A fact sheet distributed by the House Republican Conference called Clinton’s statements a “student-loan scare program” that obscured the truth about efforts to balance the budget.