Complete bewilderment.
Such was my response when a good friend of mine recently asked me how I found it in me to care so much about politics.
Now I know the usual caveat: We are just college students, stuck somewhere between having mom still wash our laundry and showing up for the career fair with a dress from the back of the closet ironed only moments before with a hair straightener. No personal experience or anything.
Getting back to the problem, college students are indeed at the halfway point between being children and being adults, but that most certainly does not mean we should stop caring about the so-called “real world.” If anything, we should start caring more, because what happens in the political scene isn’t just affecting our parents but us as well, right this very moment.
So, as the final day to register to vote is finally over, and we can all walk to class without wondering whether we should claim to be international students or suddenly get a very important phone call when we see the “Register to Vote!” signs. I feel that an attempt at an unbiased summary of our candidates is necessary to help us all decide who we will put down on those very important, very relevant little ballots come election day.
First things first, you might have heard of something called student loans? President Obama has recently introduced a new “Pay as you Earn” program, which would take students’ income into account when calculating their student loan payments after graduation by capping off each student’s monthly payment at 10% of their monthly disposable salary. According to his website, Obama believes that this plan allows “a responsible student [to] choose the college they want to attend based on their career goals and not only the price of tuition.”
Obama is also encouraging the elimination of banks from the federal student loan process. By cutting out the financial middleman and having students go directly to the Department of Education for loans, the President and other unbiased analysts believe they will save over $43 billion. Because the government can take out loans at much lower rates than the average citizen or even the average bank, this is considered a plausible plan.
Mitt Romney, on the other hand, wants to invite private lenders such as Sallie Mae back into the student loan sector and replace government as the primary student loan medium, a move he believes will decrease default rates while increasing efficiency by preventing students from taking out unnecessary loans. His campaign has also been quoted saying that students need to “shop around” for affordable college options.
According to usnews.com, Romney’s “A Chance For Every Child” plan threatens students on the verge of receiving Pell Grants, as Romney’s “simplification” of the system involves cutting certain funds from the program (estimates of affected students who would receive decreased aid packages have reached 9.6 million), as well as being completely against any growth in the long-established aid program.
How about health care, sounds important right?
We have all heard the scandalous accounts of the Supreme Court argument over President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, and, for the record, the core legislation was ruled to be constitutional. What does this mean for us?
For starters, the lifetime health insurance “cap,” the maximum payout a person can receive, will be eliminated, which mainly affects those with long-term conditions who rely on their health care plans to pay the bills for their numerous yet necessary medical procedures. Eligibility for Medicaid and additional tax credits to make insurance affordable will also increase the number of people with health insurance, therefore decreasing the number of people who are forced to go to the emergency room every time they have a sniffle.
The brightest star for college students is that we can now stay on our parent’s health care plans until the ripe old age of 26. This means that if Obama is reelected, we just might have to accept our moms’ Facebook friend requests after all.
Romney takes a slightly different approach, and by slightly I mean he aims to completely repeal the Affordable Care Act and has stated numerous times that he will sign an executive order his very first day to initiate the process. Instead, he advocates an approach similar to what he did in Massachusetts (basically Obamacare, but in Massachusetts), which can loosely be defined as letting the states decide what to do with health care. Florida has already moved to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Romney does say he believes in ensuring flexibility to help the uninsured and those with long-term illnesses and will move to limit federal standards for private insurance.
Boys, close your eyes for a paragraph or two. Ladies, under a Romney presidency employers would choose which women’s health items could be included in their health care plan – things like birth control, mammograms, and cancer screenings would all, in a sense, become subjective. Additionally, abortion would only be legal in cases of rape, incest and concern for the health of the mother; otherwise, Romney remains strictly pro-choice. Obama wants all health insurance to include all of these items regardless of an employer’s personal beliefs and is pro-choice.
The two also differ on the issue of Planned Parenthood – Obama wants to continue to spend tax dollars funding the nation’s leading sexual health care provider, while Romney wants to cut all public funding of the group.
Finally, would we be safe in a Romney or Obama America? You decide.
Obama’s national defense plan includes bringing home troops from Afghanistan and ending the war there by 2014 and eliminating nuclear weapons from foreign armories.
Romney’s plan involves increasing Navy production from nine to 15 new ships a year, along with the continued modernization of all military sectors. To pay for this, he wants to reverse Obama defense cuts and return to spending at least 4% of the nation’s GDP on defense per year.
I’m not going to tell you who to vote for, or where, or why. If you want to base your vote off of who can deliver the best one-liners or send you the most (or least) amount of junk mail, by all means. Although the real issues of the election – those that affect every adult, child, and yes, every college student – are often ensconced in political drama, they do exist, and they are right around the corner, regardless of whether you are moving forward or believing in America.
