Robin Hood, now playing at selected theaters, robbed the rich to give to the poor.
If Sherwood Forest were on the banks of the Potomac, he would try to rob the rich, fail and then give it back to them by calling it the Middle Income Student Assistance Act.
House Democratic Leader Richarde Gephardt, who was leading the pack of congressmen trying to raise the income tax to 33 percent on rich folks, is the prime sponsor of the student aid measure.
Guaranteed student loans are already available to students from moderate income families. To qualify, students and their parents have to fill out lengthy forms describing all family income and assets. If they pass the comparatively liberal means test, loans guaranteed by the government are made by banks in amounts commensurate with their ability to pay.
Students do not have to repay these loans until after graduation, and the government pays the interest expenses while they are in college. It is an attractive and vitally needed program to help families who can't afford the soaring costs of college tuition.
Gephardt, of Missouri, and his co-sponsors contend the requirements to qualify are onerous and the limits on income are too low for many families who need help to qualify.
"Today, if you apply for a government student loan, you have to have four CPAs and five tax lawyers to figure out how to fill out the paper," he said. "There are all kinds of rules about whether this counts as an asset or that. It boggles the mind of anyone including the most educated tay lawyer to fill those forms out."
His remedy is simply to abolish the income caps altogether and make student loans available regardless of need. Gephardt contends there would be no reason for wealthy families to borrow money from theis program if they can send a student to college out of their pockets.
"I can't imagine that a family that can afford to pay now is going to borrow to pay interest," Gephardt said. "Why would you do that?"
How about a free car?
In the 1970s, guaranteed student loans were made on an open-ended basis. What began to hapopen was that families who could afford to pay for college discovered they could borrow the money interest-free, put their own tuition funds into an interest-bearing savings account, pay off the student loan at the end of four years and use their interest earnings to buy junior a Mustang for graduation.
The program was growing at an alarming rate before Congress finally woke up and imposed income ceilings in 1982. Now, Gephardt and his Democratic Colleagues want to remove the ceilings so the rich can ride free again.
If the Middle Income Student Assistance Act were a box of cereal, the Food and Drug Administration would sue under the truth in labeling act.
Where are the Republicans?
Asleep? In New York buying stamps with John Sununu?
Hiding.
Last year, after thwarting the Democrats' tax increase, President Bush and the GOP were stund and hurt by accusations that they are the party of the rich.
To get even and to beat the Democrats at their own Robin Hood game, they came up with--gasp--an idea.
The White House proposed a means test on eligibility for programs like Medicare, now available to rich and poor alike. Why, the administration asked, should the government give free medical care to people who can pay the bills themselves? Budget Director Richard Darman challenged the Democrats to live by their class warfare principles--and change the laws to stop giving entitlements like Medicare to millionaires.
That proposal has sunk without a trace. President Bush did not even mention it in his recent address on domestic policy.
Republicans never really had their hearts in Darman's idea. They have been burned repeatedly by trying to tamper with Social Security and related programs for the elderly. In the latter years of the Reagan administration, they joined in a program to create a new catastrophic insurance program to protect the aged from financial ruin, with a novel provision to financeit by taxing those who could pay the most.
The outcry from the senior citizens lobby here in that act's first year of operation led to repeal by mammoth bipartisan majorities, and the GOP has never felt the same about means-testing since.
Not only has congress rejected higher taxes on the rich, but it has turned a deaf bipartisan ear to Darman's challenge to cut entitlements to the rich. Now--through the Middle Income Student Assistance Act--Gephardt and the Democrats want to give the rich another entitlement.
Robin Hood is hopelessly out of touch with the realities here.