Kicking the can down the road?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Kicking the can down the road?

This bipartisan Senate group consists of three Republicans and two Democrats, and they offered a student-loan compromise on Thursday: It would affect all federal student loans, pegging subsidized and unsubsidized undergraduate student-loan rates to the 10-year treasury note, plus 1.85 percent, and adding 3.4 percent for graduate loans and 4.4 percent for additional “PLUS” loans.

Interest rates would, unlike the House proposal, stay fixed for the life of each loan and could be consolidated at 8.25 percent when a student leaves higher education.

The five senators backing this proposal are among the most exasperated with the Senate’s current state of deliberation – patching many programs year after year without solving problems. (The student-loan issue has been punted down the field each of the past two years.)

“We’re notorious for not fixing anything. We’re notorious for kicking the can down the road,” said Sen. Joe Manchin (D) of West Virginia on Thursday. “We’ve said, enough is enough.”

Such a fix would be “the only thing that’s certain up here,” said Sen. Tom Coburn (R) of Oklahoma, “other than chaos.”

- Student loans: Despite new proposals in Congress, no fix as deadline looms, RocketNew.com, June 27, 2013.

3. The House passed a critical funding bill Tuesday to maintain transportation funding through the rest of the fiscal year by a comfortable 367-55 vote margin.