For the last 2 weeks student riots, protests, and other civil unrest made the pages of several leading publications; the topics receiving the most scorn from students and most attention in the media’s coverage were tuition hikes, funding cuts, and student loan reform. These protests have been focused in California, spreading across nearly every state campus from Berkeley to LA, because of the enormous cuts threatened by the state legislatures as results of massive budget shortfalls.

The economic stimulus package provided California over 36$ billion, more than 2$ billion of which was allocated directly by the Department of Education, yet the state continues to face large enough of budgetary issues to warrant continued underfunding of public school districts and state colleges. With stories like this coming to represent not isolated issues that are a product of a state whose legislature refuses to legislate, but widespread economic instability undermining our nation’s ability to improve our education system, it becomes hard to bow to arguments against a second economic stimulus in favor of reducing national deficits and debt.

For one thing, any solutions to fixing our debt and deficits would not actually remove said debt or deficit for many years, potentially even decades for that staggering debt we have. What remains as a more potent reality though, is that when our economy is producing goods and producing jobs and producing real economic growth, our deficits will fall as a product of increased revenue. The only reason deficit spending remains a valuable option for our federal government in rectifying our national and state economic disparities is specifically because the government has the ability to do so. States have much more difficulty doing so, yet the ensuing year after the first stimulus became law provided copious evidence to suggest that the deficit spending of the federal government has helped economies locally, regionally and nationally. Principled arguments against deficit spending in recessions can be as principled as they like, but while their principle is thriving more Americans would be losing jobs, states would be facing even more dire budgetary shortfalls, public schools would suffer, and unemployment insurance would have dried up last February for millions of Americans. This plight is exactly what the Obama administration staved off with the enactment of the Recovery Act and other assistance given to state and local municipalities, but that plight would be an ensuing reality if principle were allowed to outweigh the constraints of a recession that strangles our economy.

Such is the backdrop to the debate in Washington that will hopefully be passionately advocated for by the Democrats in Congress whose election was secured in no small part due to the involvement of young voters and students – as bailed-out mega banks like JP Morgan, Chase and Sallie Mae are lobbying to get their paws on even more taxpayer money that would otherwise go towards helping students in college and those seeking higher education with the enactment of the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (HR 3221). I’ve written about this in the past, complaining specifically “Where are the Student Groups?“, when not one week after Obama laid out his reforms to help defray the rising cost of college tuition in the State of the Union Address news broke that the largest student lenders were spending millions to lobby Congress to stop HR 3221. They currently receive massive subsidies to provide low-interest loans to students seeking financial aid, and those subsidies would stop as the federal Direct Loan program would be the sole entity to disburse the federal financial aid that some 10 million students originated just last year.

My hopes seem to have been vindicated in these last few weeks though, as national campaigns to pass the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act have been gaining momentum through the media coverage of protests in California and the support of several progressive media outlets. Firedoglake, for one, has originated a petition and a ‘call you Senator’ campaign advocating for student lending reform – they call it “Students not Banks”. Indeed, part of their campaign as well is to urge the Senate to pass this needed reform as somehow attached to the Health Care Reform so as to need only 50+1 votes to secure its passage into law.

The bill, which would decrease direct spending by 13$ billion by 2014, is yet to be introduced on the Senate floor. As such, it sits in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee chaired by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), and there are no scheduled actions regarding the bill at this time. We’ll be checking back later.

If you’ve got the time, or you’ve got the inclination, see if your Senator is on this list of committee members and give them a call.

Democrats by Rank

Tom Harkin (IA)
Christopher Dodd (CT)
Barbara A. Mikulski (MD)
Jeff Bingaman (NM)
Patty Murray (WA)
Jack Reed (RI)
Bernard Sanders (I) (VT)
Sherrod Brown (OH)
Robert P. Casey, Jr. (PA)
Kay Hagan (NC)
Jeff Merkley (OR)
Al Franken (MN)
Michael Bennet (CO)

Republicans by Rank

Michael B. Enzi (WY)
Judd Gregg (NH)
Lamar Alexander (TN)
Richard Burr (NC)
Johnny Isakson (GA)
John McCain (AZ)
Orrin G. Hatch (UT)
Lisa Murkowski (AK)
Tom Coburn, M.D. (OK)
Pat Roberts (KS)