Is There a Good Case For Doubling Student Loan Interest Rates?

Sarah Jaffe recently wrote a story about how yesterday was the estimated day student debt would hit $1 trillion dollars. President Obama has called for Congress to keep interest rates on subsidized student loans at 3.4 percent instead of letting them revert back to 6.8 percent as per the law passed in 2007. He has even started a twitter hastag for it, #dontdoublemyrate. It looks like Mitt Romney is also against letting the rate go up.

Is there any good arguments for letting interest rates on student loans double? I've been trying to find some, so let's take a tour through the right-wing.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin essentially punts at National Review Online, saying that it is a distraction. "Americans would be better able to afford college if their budgets were less pressured by gasoline, food, and health-insurance premiums." Umm, sure, I guess, though the rate matters quite a bit to those who will be impacted by it. What does that have to do with what the rate should be?

"Artificially" Low Rates?

Heritage quotes Eakins and adds a fun "None of this is to say that the federal government should be doing more to bail out students. It shouldn’t... But the current debate’s origins are in separate legislation passed in 2007 whereby the federal government set interest rates on student loans artificially low." Bailouts! Yes, bailouts. Read more......