Senate Candidate Peg Luksik | Problematic fine print

Consumer protection classes usually begin with simple directions that, if applied regularly, will afford the consumer the highest level of protection with the lowest level of effort. The most basic of these directions is “read the fine print before signing anything.”

Those intent on defrauding a consumer will go to great lengths to keep their intended victims from having the opportunity to actually read the amazingly beneficial agreements they are promoting until after the ink has dried on the victim’s signature. Once the document has been signed, the fine print becomes effective whether or not the signer was aware of its provisions.

Federal law is no different.

The political hype surrounding any piece of legislation is not nearly as important as the actual language of any bill being considered. And long after the rhetoric has faded, every citizen is bound by every word of that actual language, even if they had no opportunity to see it before it was enacted.

In 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, commonly known as the Stimulus Bill, was enacted. The political rhetoric has continually centered around how much money is being spent for what projects and whether or not jobs were saved as a result of the legislation.

But the language of the bill goes far beyond funding for particular projects. The language, which is now the law for every citizen in this nation, establishes Individual Employment Plans for workers, which every worker would have to develop and have approved by the federal government in order to be permitted to obtain the education and training necessary to reach his employment goal.

Approval would be at the sole discretion of the government, and no worker would be able to obtain funding for an education or training program that did not move him toward the particular employment that had been determined appropriate for him and for the labor needs of his region.

That’s pretty amazing fine print. And it is the law in America right now.

Let’s now move to the recently passed health care bill. The political rhetoric has centered around the cost and availability of health insurance and care. But the language of the bill has moved all student loans from the control of the private sector to the control of the federal government. In other words, a student will only be able to procure funding for post-secondary education from the government.

Students will not have the option of procuring student loans from a bank, where credit history and a more financially secure co-signer were the most common requirements in procuring a loan, where the choice of major or of school was not usually even considered. Nor will they have the option of shopping for their loans, comparing interest rates and payment options among several banks in making their decision.

With this legislation there is now only one bank in town: the federal government.

This is also now the law.

So amid all the political rhetoric over jobs and health care, the fine print of the actual federal legislation has moved control of post-secondary education decision-making from the individual to the federal government. Washington will now be able to decide which students can get which loans at which institutions for which courses of study.

And when that control is coupled with the language in the stimulus bill, which extends government control over educational decisions past the college-aged adult to those already in the workforce, we have just witnessed an almost unimaginable expansion of federal power into the lives of America’s citizens. The language gives the government the power to control what and where the citizen will be allowed to learn and the job at which the citizen will be allowed to work.

And it all happened in the fine print.

Peg Luksik is a social activist and a Republican candidate for U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania.