Hutzpah!

From "Red Alert Politics":

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor joined Republican and conservative interns and college students on the Senate side of the Capitol steps on Friday to protest the anticipated doubling of federally subsidized student loan interest rates. Rates will revert back to pre-2008 levels, jumping from 3.4 percent back to 6.8 percent, unless Congress takes action....

“A few weeks ago, the House of Representatives did the right thing — it acted,” Cantor said as he addressed the students. ”It said that students of this country have a right to a quality education and they shouldn’t be burdened by ever spiraling rates on their student loans.”

Sadly, no, as a great blogger once said. It said that if you thought Republicans would prefer for people who need to take out loans not to go to college, you'd be right. The bill the House passed last May specifically called for spiraling interest rates:

The House bill would allow student lending rates to reset each year, based on the interest rate of a 10-year Treasury note, plus 2.5 percentage points for Stafford loans. The Congressional Budget Office projected that rates on Stafford loans would rise to 5 percent in 2014 and 7.7 percent in 2023. 

Obama and the Senate have much more swallowable proposals, where at least the rate wouldn't be going up every year like one of those nightmare adustable-rate housing mortgages of way back in, um, 2007, but the House under Cantor's leadership ("leadership" would be too strong a word for Boehner's role in the shop) won't look at them. Instead, Cantor prefers to go before the cameras to pretend he actually cares. What a thug.

Blonde Eric Cantor.