Gainful employment

Suppose there was a government program designed to help provide people with low incomes the skills they needed to get good jobs and become independent. Suppose it was demonstrated that this program was a failure - the intended beneficiaries left the program without marketable skills, heavily in debt, and more dependent on government than ever. You would think that the Republicans in Congress would vote to defund this program, wouldn't you? Especially at a time when we are facing, to hear them tell it, a potentially catastrophic fiscal crisis. Well, you would be wrong.

The program I'm talking about is government financial aid in the form of Pell grants and subsidized loans for students attending for-profit colleges. According to Department of Education data, a quarter of students who get loans from the government and graduate from for-profit colleges default on their loans within three years. This compares to 10.8 percent for public colleges and universities and 7.6 percent for private not-for-profit institutions. The Department of Education has proposed a rule - the "gainful employment" rule - that would deny financial aid to students at colleges with high default rates or debt-to-income ratios after graduating.

Today Congress passed an amendment by a vote of 289 to 136 to prevent the Department of Education from enforcing this rule. The amendment would also prevent the DOE from enforcing a new rule that requires for-profit colleges to provide information about student outcomes to the DOE. The argument: the proposed rules is a "job killer"; the rule lets "government bureaucrats" decide on students' education. Of course if the program were called "job training" Republicans would be demanding deep cuts because taxpayer money should not be spent on government programs that have proven to be ineffective.

Ah, but there's another bedrock Republican principle at work here. An entrenched private business interest with a powerful Washington lobbying presence has a financial interest in continuing this government program, and so the money must be made to keep flowing. Republicans, it turns out, are not motivated by concern that taxpayers be spared the burden of funding wasteful expenditures. No, their motivation is to make sure that powerful business interests that contribute to their campaigns continue to generate profits. I am shocked, shocked!