Top Afghan Taliban commander captured

A secret raid carried out by Pakistani and U.S. intelligence agents led to the arrest of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in Karachi. Officials call it a blow to the insurgent movement.

By Greg Miller

February 16, 2010

Reporting from Washington

The second-in-command of the Afghan Taliban was captured in Pakistan last week during a raid secretly carried out by Pakistani and U.S. intelligence operatives, officials from the two countries said Monday.

The arrest of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar deals a serious blow to the Taliban and also represents a potential turning point for the government of Pakistan, which often has seemed reluctant to pursue top members of the militant group that previously ruled Afghanistan and who now take refuge across the border.

The loss of Baradar would deprive the Afghanistan insurgency of its top-ranked military mastermind at a time when U.S. forces are in the midst of a major push to roll back Taliban gains in the country.

"It is going to be a big deal, certainly a major blow," a senior Pakistani military official said, speaking of the capture on condition of anonymity.

The arrest may also represent an intelligence coup for the United States, particularly if Baradar has agreed to provide information on the whereabouts of other Taliban figures, including Mullah Mohammed Omar, the group's supreme commander, who is believed to be hiding in Pakistan.

A spokesman for the Taliban in Afghanistan, however, told the Associated Press that Baradar was still free.

"We totally deny this rumor. He has not been arrested," Zabiullah Mujahid said by telephone. He called the report Western propaganda.

But officials said Baradar was arrested in the port city of Karachi as part of an operation conducted by members of Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, working in conjunction with the CIA.

Baradar is in Pakistani custody, but many details about the operation remained unclear late Monday, including precisely when he was captured and whether he is cooperating. The Obama administration has said it no longer engages in such interrogation methods as water boarding; Pakistani authorities have been known to use harsh questioning tactics in the past.

CIA and White House officials declined to comment on Baradar's capture. Senior U.S. intelligence officials including CIA Director Leon E. Panetta have testified in recent weeks that the agency is taking part in overseas interrogations of suspected terrorists. But their comments appear to have preceded the capture of Baradar, who was a close associate of Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden before the Taliban and Al Qaeda fled Afghanistan to take refuge in Pakistan after the U.S.-led invasion in late 2001.

Baradar is the highest-ranking Taliban militant to be captured since the fighting began. He is perhaps the closest aide to Mullah Omar, and their association dates back to the movement's earliest days.

But even while professing fealty to Mullah Omar, and consistently invoking his authority when dealing with others in the movement, Baradar is believed to have a much greater hands-on role than his chief in masterminding military operations and disbursing Taliban money.

With the reclusive-minded Mullah Omar having retreated into something of a figurehead role, Baradar has been the principal power in the so-called Quetta shura, the main Taliban decision-making body, named for the southern Pakistani city in which it is based. Baradar has a reputation for ruthlessness, but is also described as a charismatic figure who has good rapport with Taliban field commanders throughout Afghanistan.

He is also far better versed in technology and world affairs than the unschooled Mullah Omar, who in many respects is considered little changed from his days as a village cleric.

Baradar has been an advocate of many of the insurgent tactics that have made the last year the deadliest yet for U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, said a Western military official in Afghanistan, also speaking on condition of anonymity. Those tactics include expanded use of homemade bombs, the singling out of vulnerable U.S. bases and patrols for ambushes and raids, the eschewing of efforts to hold territory in favor of mobility and quickness, and the avoidance of head-on confrontations with better armed-Western forces in favor of melting away and regrouping.

The Pakistani military official said Baradar's capture could bolster the U.S. aim of weakening the Afghan Taliban to sap its support and convince less committed elements to leave it.

"Everything you are doing is to start negotiation from a position of strength, and you are gradually getting that strength," the official said. Pakistani and Saudi Arabian intelligence officials have had secret talks with Taliban leaders in recent months to that end.

Baradar's arrest was first reported Monday night by the New York Times, which said its reporters initially learned of the capture Thursday but delayed reporting it because White House officials said that doing so could jeopardize intelligence-gathering. The paper said it published its story Monday night because the arrest was becoming more widely known in the region.

The capture signals a potentially major change of course for the Pakistani government.

U.S. officials have accused Islamabad of secretly providing support to the Afghan Taliban in an effort to maintain ties to the group in case the militants are able to reclaim power next door.

Pakistan had proved far more willing to pursue members of the Pakistani Taliban, which has carried out deadly attacks inside that country aimed at destabilizing Islamabad and imposing strict Islamic law in parts of Pakistan's territory.

The capture of Baradar is likely to raise expectations that Islamabad may be prepared to move more aggressively against Mullah Omar and other top members of the Afghan Taliban movement, which is believed to be based primarily in Quetta.

The Pakistani military official downplayed suggestions that the capture signified a new direction for the government in Islamabad.

"I wouldn't say it is a turning point," the official said, adding that Pakistan has always been committed to rooting out militants and that it has become more convinced recently of U.S. commitment to the region.

The CIA and the Inter-Services Intelligence agency have cooperated on a series of high-level captures, most notably in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks when they teamed up to apprehend suspected Al Qaeda leaders, including the avowed mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

Those raids almost always took place in major Pakistani cities, far from the more rugged and lawless tribal regions along the Afghan border where Bin Laden and others are believed to have taken refuge. But there have been few significant captures in recent years, and the U.S. has instead relied on an intense campaign of missile strikes from unmanned aircraft against Taliban and Al Qaeda targets.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-taliban-arrest16-2010feb16,0,5416607,print.story

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Alabama professor had visited shooting range

Amy Bishop, accused of killing three university colleagues at a faculty meeting, had gone to the range with her husband.

Associated Press

February 16, 2010

Huntsville, Ala.

The husband of an Alabama professor accused of fatally shooting three colleagues said Monday that he had gone with her to a shooting range recently but that he didn't know where she got the gun she used for practice that day.

James Anderson told the Associated Press that his wife, Amy Bishop, didn't do anything unusual in the days before Friday's shooting.

Bishop is accused of opening fire at a faculty meeting and shooting six people, three fatally. Two of the survivors remained in critical condition Monday.

Anderson said he knew his wife had a gun, but didn't know when or how she got it.

Police have previously said Bishop had no permit for the gun they think she used in the shooting, and investigators said they didn't know where she got it. It's not clear if that was the same gun that her husband said she had used at the shooting range.

Bishop's husband said nothing unusual happened on their trip to the shooting range, and that she didn't reveal why she took an interest in target practice.

Nothing in her behavior before the shooting foreshadowed the violence last week, he said.

"She was just a normal professor," he said.

On Monday, some victims' relatives were asking how Bishop was hired at the university in 2003 after she was questioned years ago in separate criminal investigations.

In 1986, Bishop shot and killed her 18-year-old brother with a shotgun at their Braintree, Mass., home. She told police at the time that she had been trying to learn how to use the gun, which her father had bought for protection, when it accidentally discharged.

Authorities released her and said the episode was an accident. She was never charged, though current Braintree Police Chief Paul Frazier questions how the investigation was handled.

In another incident, the Boston Globe reported that Bishop and her husband were questioned in 1993 by investigators looking into a pipe bomb sent to one of Bishop's colleagues at Children's Hospital Boston. The bomb did not go off, and nobody was charged.

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-alabama-shooting16-2010feb16,0,7584009,print.story

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OPINION

Taking stock of Iran's nuclear ambitions

If the Obama administration wants sanctions to be effective, it must stop relying on a flawed 2007 intelligence report.

By Ilan Berman and Robert C. McFarlane

February 16, 2010

What can the Obama administration do about Iran's drive to develop nuclear weapons?

The president's informal year-end deadline for a diplomatic resolution to the nuclear impasse with Iran has come and gone. Iran recently announced that it plans to build 10 nuclear fuel plants and has moved to enrich uranium to a higher level than necessary for peaceful purposes. As a result, the center of gravity within Washington policy circles is moving toward punitive measures against the Islamic Republic in the hope of curtailing its persistent nuclear ambitions.

Yet in order for the tougher measures it contemplates to be effective, the White House will need to know a lot more about the Iranian program than appears to be the case currently. A comprehensive reevaluation of what we know about Iran's atomic drive -- and what it means -- is in order.

So far, the administration's approach toward Iran has relied heavily on the conclusions of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE. But that report, with its central conclusion that Iran had ended its nuclear weapons program in 2003, turned out to be profoundly wrong on at least two counts.

The first was its presumption that Iran had halted work on nuclear weapons for an extended period of time. At the time, this claim was hotly contested by a host of other nations, which warned -- based on their own independent appraisals of the available intelligence -- that Iran's internal nuclear weapons freeze had been fleeting, if it had ever existed at all.

Time has only added credibility to those more sober assessments. At the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh in September, President Obama and other Western leaders publicly revealed details concerning a secret nuclear site located in the Iranian city of Qom, a facility overseen by Iran's Revolutionary Guard and convincingly linked to evidence of nuclear weapons work on the part of the Iranian regime. Just three months later, secret documents surfaced detailing Iran's work on a neutron initiator. This is a trigger mechanism for nuclear weapons that specialists equate to a "smoking gun" indicating that Iran is developing a bomb.

The NIE's second oversight was its complete disregard for Iran's uranium enrichment activities. The stance was puzzling because the fabrication of fissile material is the crucial step in building a nuclear weapon. But the NIE explicitly excluded Iran's "civil" nuclear program from its analysis -- thereby robbing it of any predictive capability for determining when Iran will have the raw material necessary to build a nuclear weapon, should it decide to do so.

The last two years have seen major movement on that score. By February 2009, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear proliferation watchdog, had concluded that Iran possessed a metric ton of low-enriched uranium -- a quantity sufficient to build one nuclear bomb, if enriched to weapons-grade. This stockpile is growing rapidly thanks to the expanding number of centrifuges in Iran's inventory. As of last April, Iran could boast some 7,000 operational units; if the Iranian government meets its stated goals, that number will soon grow to more than 52,000. With such an "industrial" centrifuge capability, the Iranian regime would have the ability to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for nearly half a dozen nuclear weapons annually.

These intelligence failures warrant focused analysis now that U.S. policy toward Iran has reached a critical juncture. Recent news that the U.S. intelligence community has undertaken a partial reassessment of the conclusions of the 2007 NIE is welcome indeed. But it does not go far enough. The policy change now underway within the administration necessitates an equally sweeping reevaluation of what we know -- and what we don't know -- about the status of Iran's nuclear weapons program.

Such an assessment, moreover, must be carried out in concert with Congress and with input from private-sector experts. The experience of the misjudgments about Iran in the 2007 report makes clear that the NIE process itself is opaque and incomplete at best. At worst, it is susceptible to politicization -- something that could be avoided if a "Team B" approach involving competitive analysis were adopted.

In other words, in order to hold water with allies or the American public now, a rethinking of intelligence on Iran will need to take a different form -- one that is transparent, comprehensive in nature and inclusive of dissenting opinions. Just as important, it will need to account for the dynamism we have seen in Iran's nuclear effort over the last two years.

Given how much progress Iran has made already, there's no time to waste.

Ilan Berman is vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington. Robert C. McFarlane, former national security advisor to President Reagan, is chairman of a consulting firm specializing in national security and homeland security.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-berman16-2010feb16,0,3148269,print.story

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OPINION

Brennan, politics and national security

Critics of the Obama administration on security issues are accused of engaging in partisan attacks. But partisan arguments are a key part of democracy.

Jonah Goldberg

February 16, 2010

'Politics should never get in the way of national security," wrote John Brennan, the White House's shockingly political deputy national security advisor. His USA Today Op-Ed article last week set off a firestorm inside the Beltway by essentially accusing critics of administration policy of deliberately lying -- "misrepresenting the facts to score political points, instead of coming together to keep us safe" -- and aiding and abetting Al Qaeda. "Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of Al Qaeda."

The fight Brennan is asking for is a classic D.C. slugfest, with charges of partisanship and insinuations of unpatriotism. To some it seems like American politics at its worst. It's not American politics at its best, but maybe it's not so bad either.

Partisan attacks are the democratic equivalent of a market signal to those in power. Most businessmen hate competition, but the most successful businesses learn from what the market tells them. Competitors expose vulnerabilities in your product line and deficiencies in your sales pitch. The unhealthiest firms are those that have gone the longest without serious competition. It's the same in nearly every field of human endeavor. In a democracy, the hope is that serious arguments will win out over frivolous ones. The only way for that to happen is to have the arguments.

For the record, I basically agree with Brennan's critics. The Obama administration's explanations for how it's treated the suspect in the attempted Christmas Day bombing and how it dealt with the civilian trial for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other Al Qaeda terrorists have been incoherent and amateurish. Also, Brennan's talking-point hackery, even to denounce alleged talking-point hackery, is bad form for a high-ranking national security official. It leaves the impression that the guy running the anti-terrorism effort is a political operative first and terrorism-fighter second.

But let's take those talking points at face value. Who says politics should never interfere with national security? Politics is the means by which we define acceptable trade-offs. How else but through politics are we to hash out everything from waterboarding to wiretapping?

Let's assume Brennan's right about President Obama's critics -- that, for political reasons, they're distorting the facts of how the Christmas Day suspect was handled. Would that help Al Qaeda? Wouldn't that depend on what direction the critics are pushing the administration? In this case, it's for more hawkishness against Al Qaeda.

And lying in itself isn't aid and comfort to the enemy. John F. Kennedy successfully misrepresented the facts about the "missile gap" in 1960, in a hawkish direction. But I'm not sure it helped the Soviets.

I'm not defending lying -- and Brennan offers no evidence on that score. I'm just trying to unpack his argument. As with his boss, it seems Brennan's real objection is to inconvenient criticism, and he's willing to use any rhetorical weapon near to hand to delegitimize it.

That's why he suggests criticism is driven by partisanship. But partisanship is one of the necessary antibodies of a healthy democracy. As the Washington Post's Fred Hiatt has noted, partisanship defined the debate over port security during the Bush years. Democrats in Congress harped on the Bush "failure" to achieve the impossible goal of inspecting every cargo container. Now that Obama has adopted the Bush policy, the same voices are cheering.

The hypocrisy might be annoying, but the Democrats' anti-Bush partisanship also called attention to an important issue. The real danger now is that Democrats will abdicate diligent oversight out of partisan loyalty.

Every White House is prone to group-think. So it's no wonder that this administration has the tendency to dismiss criticism as illegitimate, partisan and even dangerous. The Bush White House certainly dabbled in this sort of thing on the grounds that there was a war on. Democrats used to take great offense, which is why they insisted dissent was the highest form of patriotism. Brennan's tantrum reveals that that talking point is a dead letter.

But I'm less concerned about that than I am about Obama's faith in something called "post-partisan politics." Politics without partisanship isn't politics. And democracy without politics isn't democracy.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-goldberg16-2010feb16,0,2023816,print.column

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From the Daily News

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Prisoner release an opportunity to create a safer and more effective approach to incarceration

WE all know that California is struggling to deal with a budget crisis, and among the many cost-cutting measures to make headlines recently is a plan to grant early parole to the lowest-risk prisoners in the state prison system.

It's one of the most controversial elements in an effort to reduce the state prison population - a step that's urgently needed not only because of fiscal hardships, but also because a three-judge federal court recently found that massive prison overcrowding in California is creating intolerable public health and safety risks, as prisoners subjected to poor medical and mental health care are released to communities whose own health services are already overwhelmed.

Reductions in the state prison population will unquestionably put more pressure on Los Angeles County's already overcrowded jails. Some offenders are transferred here for custody while, concurrently, community services for mentally ill parolees decline, increasing the chances that they'll wind up back in jail. Nevertheless, contrary to what some law enforcement officials are saying, there are practical ways to deal with these changes without contributing to jail overcrowding or threatening the safety of our communities.

The ACLU is a court-ordered monitor of conditions in Los Angeles County's jails, giving us an insider's view of the largest and most expensive jail system in the nation. We're convinced that the county could significantly reduce the number of inmates it incarcerates and save precious taxpayer funds - while actually increasing public safety - by committing to alternatives that would divert and treat many detainees rather than simply warehousing them behind bars.

The current effort to reduce the state's prison population to comply with a newly enacted state law creates an even more compelling reason for the county to put these programs in place now.

The vast majority of detainees in the county jail are simply awaiting their day in court, many for relatively trivial offenses, and are too poor to make bail. Yet in a recent ACLU report about the Men's Central Jail in downtown L.A., a national expert on correctional mental health care documented how these detainees are thrown together in a massively crowded facility under toxic conditions that contribute to violence, victimization, custodial abuse and disorientation. The thousands who suffer from serious mental illness suffer the most during their incarceration. It's no coincidence that one recent study found that after they're released, 95 percent of such jail inmates wind up back in prison.

Without careful planning and additional resources for the county to treat inmates with serious mental illness, the effort to reduce the state's prison and parole population is likely to magnify this problem. In a memo last month, Marvin J. Southard, director of mental health services for the Los Angeles County, warned that looming changes in how and where hundreds of parolees with serious mental illness will be treated could result "in an increase in recidivism in general, further exacerbating current overcrowding problems at the county jails and strain the provision of mental health services in the jail."

Los Angeles County is not alone in looking for ways to reduce the number of people it incarcerates, including those who are mentally ill. New York, Mississippi, Michigan and other state and local jurisdictions around the nation have sought more effective and less costly ways to deal with detainees. Community supervision, electronic monitoring, supported housing, and drug and mental-health treatment programs are among the most promising and cost-effective strategies they have identified as alternatives to the high cost of incarceration.

We have proposed that the county and the sheriff collaborate with the ACLU to develop similar programs, a step that could be accomplished within 6 to 12 months. That plan could identify the significant number of seriously mentally ill pretrial detainees in jail who currently go unidentified and untreated; identify those who could be safely released from jail and monitored as they participate in mental-health and substance-abuse treatment programs; and identify comparatively low-cost methods of effective treatment for mentally ill inmates who cannot be released.

The county is planning major new jail construction that will come at a high cost to county taxpayers. We should avoid this unwise expenditure and instead reduce the jail population, to end once and for all the conditions that create a revolving door between the jail and the street.

We urge the Sheriff's Department and the county Board of Supervisors to view ongoing cuts in the state's prison system's budget not as a calamity, but as an opportunity to create a safer and more effective approach to incarceration.

http://www.dailynews.com/opinions/ci_14407442

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From the White House

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President Obama Addresses the U.S.-Islamic World Forum

Today, the President addressed by video the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar.  He outlined the actions the United States has taken since his speech in Cairo, Egypt last June, in which he called for a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world.  The President emphasized that the U.S is ending in the war in Iraq, creating partnerships to isolate violent extremists in Afghanistan, and pursuing a two-state solution that recognizes the rights and security of Palestinians and Israelis.

He  also described the government-wide approach the Administration is taking to create immediate and long-term programs and partnerships that seek to improve the daily lives of people in Muslim communities around the world.  All agencies and departments – from NASA and the Small Busines Administration to the Department of State and USAID – have worked together to implement a number of programs in the areas of education, entrepreneurship, health,  and science and technology.  For example, after holding thousands of listening sessions around the world, the U.S. has expanded exchange programs and online opportunities, forged a global recovery effort to create jobs in all regions of the world, launched a Global Technology and Innovation Fund to invest in technological development in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, worked with Saudi officials to address H1N1 to prepare for Hajj, and partnered with the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to eradicate polio.    

At home, senior officials across the Administration – including Attorney General Holder, Secretary Napolitano, and Secretary Locke – have engaged Muslim communities around the country, and today, John Brennan, the President's top counter-terrorism advisor, will hold a town hall dialogue at the Islamic Center of New York University with students and community leaders from around the country.

As part of his commitment to continue to seek a new beginning with Muslim communities around the world, and to expand upon the partnerships he outlined in Cairo, I am honored and humbled that the President has asked me to serve as his Special Envoy to the OIC.  President Obama has emphasized that progress will be judged not by our words, but our actions, and I am committed to deepening the partnerships that he outlined in his visionary address last summer.   I look forward to updating you on the Administration's efforts in these areas over the coming months.

Today's remarks by President Obama in Doha are below:

Assalaamu alaykum.  And on behalf of the American people—including Muslim communities across America—greetings as you gather for the 7th U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha.

I want to thank all those whose support has made this Forum possible, especially the Amir of Qatar, the government of Qatar and the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution.  It is fitting that you gather again in Doha—a place where our countries come together to forge innovative partnerships in education and medicine, science and technology. 

Thank you all for being here.  As leaders in government, academia, media, business, faith organizations and civil society, you understand that we are all bound together by common aspirations—to live with dignity, to get an education, to enjoy healthy lives, to live in peace and security, and to give our children a better future.

Yet you also know that the United States and Muslims around the world have often slipped into a cycle of misunderstanding and mistrust that can lead to conflict rather than cooperation.

That is why in Cairo last year I called for a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect.  I laid out a vision where we all embrace our responsibilities to build a world that is more peaceful and secure.  It has only been eight months since Cairo, and much remains to be done.  But I believe we've laid the groundwork to turn those pledges into action.

The United States is responsibly ending the war in Iraq; we are removing all our combat brigades from Iraq by the end of August, and we will partner with the Iraqi people on behalf of their long-term security and prosperity.  In Afghanistan and beyond, we are forging partnerships to isolate violent extremists, reduce corruption and to promote good governance and development that improves lives.  We remain unyielding in pursuit of a two-state solution that recognizes the rights and security of Israelis and Palestinians.  And the United States will continue to stand for the human rights and dignity of people around the world.

And while the United States will never waver in these efforts, I also pledged in Cairo to seek new partnerships in Muslim communities around the world—not just with governments, but with people, to address the issues that matter most in our daily lives.

Since then, my administration has made a sustained effort to listen.  We've held thousands of events and town halls—with students, civil society groups, faith leaders and entrepreneurs—in the United States and around the world, including Secretary Clinton's landmark visit to Pakistan. And I look forward to continuing the dialogue during my visit to Indonesia next month. 

This dialogue has helped us turn many of the initiatives I outlined in Cairo into action.

We're partnering to promote education.  We're expanding exchange programs and pursuing new opportunities for online learning, connecting students in America with those in Qatar and other Muslim communities.  Because knowledge is the currency of the 21st century, and countries that educate their children—including their daughters—are more likely to prosper.

We're partnering to broaden economic development.  We're working to ensure that the global economic recovery creates jobs and prosperity in all regions of the world.  And to help foster innovation and job-creation, I'll host a Summit on Entrepreneurship in April with business leaders and entrepreneurs from Muslim communities around the world.

We're partnering to increase collaboration on science and technology.  We've launched a Global Technology and Innovation Fund that will invest in technological development across the Middle East, Africa and Asia.  And the first of our distinguished Science Envoys have begun visiting countries to deepen science and technology cooperation over the long-term.

And we're partnering to promote global health.  We worked together to address H1N1, which was a concern of many Muslims during the hajj.  We've joined with the Organization of the Islamic Conference to eradicate polio.  And as part of our increased commitment to foreign assistance, we've launched major initiatives to promote global health and food security around the world.

To deepen these partnerships, and to develop others, I'm proud to announce today that I am appointing my Special Envoy to the OIC—Rashad Hussain.  As an accomplished lawyer and a close and trusted member of my White House staff, Rashad has played a key role in developing the partnerships I called for in Cairo.  And as a hafiz of the Qur'an, he is a respected member of the American Muslim community, and I thank him for carrying forward this important work.

None of this will be easy.  Fully realizing the new beginning we envision will take a long-term commitment.  But we have begun.  Now, it falls to us all, governments and individuals, to do the hard work that must be done—turning words into deeds and “Writing the Next Chapter” in the ties between us, with faith in each other, on the basis of mutual respect.

Thank you coming to Doha in that spirit.  Thank you for your work to advance the principles we share—justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

Let us succeed together.  And may God's peace be upon you.

Rashad Hussain is Special Envoy to the OIC

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/02/13/president-obama-addresses-us-islamic-world-forum

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Relief from Crushing Student Loan Payments

On January 25th, the Middle Class Task Force unveiled several initiatives designed to relieve the strain on family budgets, including a cap on student loan payments.  A few days later, the President talked about this student loan proposal during his State of the Union address.  The President's words generated a lot of interest and excitement, so we wanted to tell you a little more about our plan.

Over the past three decades, college tuition has grown ten times faster than real median incomes for families with children. So it's no surprise that about two-thirds of graduates take out loans to pay for college and their average debt is over $23,000.  But we didn't need statistics to understand how challenging it can be to pay for college; the Vice President and other members of the Task Force heard about it directly from students, parents, faculty and administrators when we held meetings at Syracuse University and the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

We are proposing to make federal student loans more affordable by limiting a borrower's payments to 10 percent of the income he or she has left over after covering basic expenses. Here is an example:  The monthly payment for a single borrower earning $30,000 who owes $20,000 in loans would be $115 a month, compared to $228 a month under the standard 10-year repayment plan. 

Our proposal has been praised by a number of student aid experts. According to Dr. Michael Lomax, the President and CEO of UNCF, this change “will decrease the loan payments of hundreds of thousands of low-income borrowers with significant student loan debt, lightening the load of many Americans and enabling them to get the education they need, and our nation needs them to have.”

Debt can be especially difficult to manage for borrowers in low-paying public service careers, as well as those who have lost their jobs.  Lauren Asher, the President of the Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS) noted that “this is a well-targeted and well-timed change that would help people who are struggling to stay afloat financially.”

In addition to lowering monthly payments, we are proposing to keep the total cost of loan repayment manageable by forgiving all remaining debt after 20 years of payments, or 10 years of payments for those in public service work.  As Mark Kantrowitz, the publisher of finaid.org said, the “acceleration of the loan forgiveness will ensure that borrowers are not still paying back their own federal student loans when their children enroll in college.”

These changes build on the Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan for student loans that was implemented last summer.   Lauren Asher of TICAS explained that IBR “was supported by a broad coalition of student, parent, loan industry, and higher education groups to make college more affordable and accessible,” and our proposal is “a way to make the program even more helpful to responsible borrowers.”

This initiative complements other key pieces of the Administration's agenda, like extending the American Opportunity Tax Credit for college expenses and passing legislation, which is currently before the Senate, to reform student lending to eliminate tens of billions of dollars in wasteful subsidies to banks. The savings will be used to expand Pell Grants and invest in community colleges.  Together, these proposals will make it easier for millions of Americans to pursue their college dreams. 

Brian Levine is the Deputy Domestic Policy Advisor to the Vice President

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/02/15/relief-crushing-student-loan-payments

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