It proved to be extraordinarily difficult to kill the Russian mystic Rasputin, who had immense influence on the Romanoffs during World War I. He did eventually succumb, of course.
In his latest SeeThru commentary, Cato’s Neal McCluskey relates the bad news that the Perkins Loan program, which we had thought dead, will be revived. Senator Lamar Alexander, evidently, just can’t tolerate a reduction in Uncle Sam’s faux generosity. As chairman of the Senate education committee (a committee that shouldn’t even exist), he has plenty of clout to keep Perkins going for at least two more years. After two years, McCluskey surmises, “It will likely either just remain, or get some new window dressing and be renamed. We will have lost even the slight progress that ending Perkins would have made against hugely counterproductive federal ‘help.’”
This is like the housing bubble. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac contributed greatly to it, but did Congress get rid of them afterwards? No. Same thing here. Congress should be eliminating subsidy programs for higher ed, but the politicians just won’t do it.