Barack Obama:
There are many reasons that college students should vote Tuesday to reelect President Barack Obama and today I will elaborate on a few of those reasons.
First, Obama has worked hard to try to make it easier for everyone who wants to go to college be able to do so.
He consolidated all government-backed student loans to go straight to schools from the government instead of going through private lending institutions.
That means the interest on government subsidized student loans doesn’t start accumulating until after you have finished college, resulting in less money for you to pay back.
Then, he added an income-based repayment plan option on government subsidized student loans so if your college degree does not yield you a job making a lot of money, you can base your student loan repayment on your income.
The result is making student loans a little less burdensome to repay.
Obama also increased funding for Pell Grants for lower income people so the amount of money given via the Pell Grant keeps up with the rate of inflation.
On the other side, Mitt Romney’s running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, introduced a budget proposal in 2011 that would reduce the amount of money given for Pell grants and return the student loan system to its previous incarnation, where private lending institutions tacked on more money to your loans to pay for their services, ultimately costing students more money to attend college.
For that reason alone, you should vote to re-elect Obama, but it is not the only reason.
If you live in Ohio or Michigan, or anywhere else throughout the Midwest, Obama probably saved the job of a friend or family member when he refused to let General Motors and Chrysler go out of business.
The facts of Obama’s bailout of the auto industry have been distorted and criticized by people living in other parts of the country, but most of us here in Ohio get it. Saving the auto industry is about more than just saving jobs at car manufacturing plants.
Eric Burkland, the head of the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association, said in a New York Times article, that for every person who works in an auto plant, there are seven jobs in supporting industries, such as paint suppliers, restaurants, engineers, accountants and lawyers.
While Obama was putting himself at potential political risk to save approximately a million automotive jobs (all government loans that were used to save the auto industry were paid back ahead of schedule), Romney wrote an editorial in the New York Times saying that the government should let Detroit go bankrupt.
Our country cannot afford that kind of leadership.
While people on the right love to badmouth the Patient Protection and Affordability Act (aka Obamacare), in truth it is the most significant health care legislation since the passage of Medicare.
Obamacare guarantees that people can no longer be denied healthcare coverage based on preexisting conditions and young adults can remain covered on their parents’ insurance plans until they are 26 years old.
It is estimated that once Obamacare is fully implemented in 2014, as many as 30 million people who did not have healthcare before will now be insured.
As my time runs out, I want to mention a few other reasons to re-elect Obama that I don’t have space here to elaborate on.
Obama made it legal for homosexuals to serve openly in the military and supports marriage equality for same sex couples.
He supports equal work for equal pay for women and supports a woman’s right to make her own reproductive choices.
He ended the war in Iraq and is in the midst of a phased withdrawal from Afghanistan, restoring America’s diplomatic credibility around the world.
With his American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Obama saved at least 300,000 education jobs.
And did I mention he found and ordered the Navy Seals to kill Osama bin Laden?
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