Oh, there is a difference.

Our Senator Roy Blunt (r):

HuffPost College ‏@HuffPostCollege

Senator blames college students for borrowing [….] 12:39 PM – 21 Apr 2015

The article:

David Halperin

Senator Blunt Blames College Students for Borrowing

Posted: 04/21/2015 12:28 pm EDT

Parroting a familiar talking point by bad actors in the for-profit college industry, Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) appeared last week to blame students for their high student loan burdens. After questioning Secretary of Education Arne Duncan at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday about regulations aimed at for-profit colleges, Blunt, a member of the Senate GOP leadership, said (at the 1:38:00 mark in the linked video):

We ought to be talking about … the debt problem when you get out of school. How much of that related to the actual cost of going to school and how much it related to what you thought your living standards should be while you went to school, and I’m pretty confident over the years that the student expectations for their personal living standards in school have often increased where they would have been a few just years ago.

[….]

Secretary of State Jason Kander (D), who is challenging Senator Blunt (r) in 2016:

Jason Kander ‏@JasonKander

I want to help middle class Missourians send their kids to college. Shaming those kids won’t be my approach. 3:25 PM – 21 Apr 2015

Social media is so immediate:

Jeff Mazur ‏@jmaz

Can’t students just provide for their “living standards” with lavish lobbyist wedding gifts like normal people? 3:36 PM – 21 Apr 2015

Okay, that one left a mark.

June 17, 2004, in the Washington Post:

[….]

Gifts of Legislative Love

[….]

In the section of his report that is supposed to disclose gifts of more than $285, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) pointed readers to attached correspondence concerning his wedding gifts. Blunt married Abigail Perlman, a lobbyist for Altria Corp., the parent company of Philip Morris, in October.

On Sept. 15, Blunt wrote to Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), chairman of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, and noted his impending marriage. “I anticipate receiving wedding gifts in connection with this event and I would like to request a waiver of the limitations of the gift rule to allow me to accept gifts in connection with my wedding,” he wrote.

[….]

On Oct. 1, Blunt wrote Hefley requesting a reporting waiver “to prevent the paperwork of filing numerous disclosure forms for every gift my wife and I receive.”

Oct. 3, Hefley and Mollohan granted his request.

[….]

Must be nice.

Steve Benen at Maddow Blog writes today about the efforts of President Obama and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren to do something about the issue of college affordability for middle and working class families, specifically about college loan debt. It’s a big problem for a country that desperately needs to educate its children:

The numbers are staggering. As Ayan Chatterjee recently reported, “Student marketing company Edvisors calculates that the average student in the class of 2014 is expected to graduate with nearly $33,000 in debt, with nearly 60 percent of all college students having taken out a student loan. And because the debt burden has risen significantly faster than inflation, up a whopping 361.3% since 2003 according to the New York Federal Reserve, the total pile of student debt in the United States now sits at almost $1.2 trillion dollars.”

The President is proposing mechanisms to make it easier to pay back loans while, Warren is sponsoring a new, lower-interest loan structure – one which would allow students with existing loans to refinance them at a lower rate, making college something other than a life sentence of debt servitude.

Republican legislators, who are mostly responsible for the student loan interest rates currently in place – which only benefits private lenders to the detriment of college students – are, as might be expected, mostly opposed to Warren’s legislation. Thirty-nine Democrats have, however, jumped in to co-sponsor the bill.

Which leads to my question. Why is Claire McCaskill’s name missing from the list of these co-sponsors? She was present and accounted for last time Warren tried to do something about student debt. Is she just late in signing up or does she think it’s enough to vote “yea” when the times come. Or does she have a problem with this year’s version? Why don’t you ask McCaskill why she’s AWOL on this bill? I’m planning to do so.  

On May 23rd, via Twitter:

Rep. Vicky Hartzler ‏@RepHartzler 23 May

Just voted for H.R. 1911, allowing students to take advantage of low interest rates for school loans. [….] 12:24 PM – 23 May 13

Today:

Nancy Pelosi ‏@NancyPelosi 59m

Why the GOP “solution” to student debt is not even close to a real solution-in one chart: #DontDoubleMyRate [….] 2:58 PM – 5 Jun 13

July 2, 2012:

Video by Jerry Schmidt

President Obama called on Congress to act before student loan interest rates increase:

The transcript from the White House:

Remarks of President Barack Obama

Weekly Address

The White House

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Hi.  This week, I got the chance to sit down with some impressive students at Lorain County Community College in Ohio.  One of them was a woman named Andrea Ashley.  Two years ago, Andrea lost her job as an HR analyst.  Today, she’s getting certified in the fast-growing field of electronic medical records.  Before enrolling at Lorain, Andrea told me she was looking everywhere trying to find a new job.  But without a degree, she said that nobody would hire her.

Andrea’s story isn’t unique.  I’ve met so many Americans who are out there pounding the pavement looking for work only to discover that they need new skills.  And I’ve met a lot of employers who are looking for workers, but can’t find ones with the skills they’re looking for.

So we should be doing everything we can to put higher education within reach for every American – because at a time when the unemployment rate for Americans with at least a college degree is about half the national average, it’s never been more important.  But here’s the thing: it’s also never been more expensive.  Students who take out loans to pay for college graduate owing an average of $25,000.  For the first time, Americans owe more debt on their student loans than they do on their credit cards.  And for many working families, the idea of owing that much money means that higher education is simply out of reach for their children.

In America, higher education cannot be a luxury.  It’s an economic imperative that every family must be able to afford.  That’s why next week I’ll be visiting colleges across the country, talking to students about how we can make higher education more affordable – and what’s at stake right now if Congress doesn’t do something about it.  You see, if Congress doesn’t act, on July 1st interest rates on some student loans will double.  Nearly seven and half million students will end up owing more on their loan payments.  That would be a tremendous blow.  And it’s completely preventable.

This issue didn’t come out of nowhere.  For some time now, I’ve been calling on Congress to take steps to make higher education more affordable – to prevent these interest rates from doubling, to extend the tuition tax credit that has saved middle-class families millions of dollars, and to double the number of work-study jobs over the next five years.

Instead, over the past few years, Republicans in Congress have voted against new ways to make college more affordable for middle-class families, and voted for huge new tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires – tax cuts that would have to be paid for by cutting things like education and job-training programs that give students new opportunities to work and succeed.

We cannot just cut our way to prosperity.  Making it harder for our young people to afford higher education and earn their degrees is nothing more than cutting our own future off at the knees.  Congress needs to keep interest rates on student loans from doubling, and they need to do it now.

This is a question of values.  We cannot let America become a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of people struggle to get by.  We’ve got to build an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.  That’s how the middle class gets stronger.  That’s an economy that’s built to last.  And I’m not only going to take that case to college campuses next week – I’m going to take it to every part of the country this year.  Thanks, and have a great weekend.

“…We cannot let America become a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of people struggle to get by…”

Uh, for right wingnut republicans, that’s a feature, not a bug.

This is another symptom of their systematic assault on higher education.