Washington – The White House responded Wednesday to its first We the People online petition — a request to forgive all student loan debt to stimulate the economy — with changes to the government’s income-based repayment program that will significantly lower monthly payments for some borrowers.
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The plan — detailed in a letter from Special Assistant to the President for Education Policy Roberto Rodriguez — was posted on the We the People website and sent by email to the petition’s roughly 32,000 signatories, White House New Media Director Macon Phillips said. The White House will be responding to more petitions in coming days, Phillips said.
Other petitions that have topped the higher threshold call on the administration to legalize marijuana; abolish the Transportation Security Administration; illegalize the large-scale breeding of puppies; and reopen an investigation of misconduct in the prosecution of Sholom Rubashkin, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish businessman who was convicted of financial fraud in connection with a kosher meatpacking plant he ran in Postville, Iowa.
The White House launched We the People in September as part of a collection of open government initiatives. The site allows users to create petitions, sign existing ones and stump for supporters on social media sites. Petitions on the site have garnered more than a million signatures and a new user is registering on the site roughly once every 15 minutes, Phillips said.
The White House raised the threshold for a petition response to 25,000 signatures early this month, saying it was quickly overwhelmed with more popular petitions than it could adequately respond to.
The George Washington University Political Science Professor Michael Cornfield on Wednesday praised We the People as a way to “narrow cast” the administration’s message to a set of constituents who care deeply about a particular issue — and who may be willing to accept less than a full endorsement of their position if the White House takes the time to explain itself to them in detail, as Rodriguez’s letter does.
“I see it as the kind of genuine dialogue you’d have had 100 years ago if you and five of your buddies had gone down to see the ward boss,” he said.
Cornfield also called the Obama administration’s decision to respond to the student loan petition first a “shrewd” political move because it addresses a major issue pressed by the Occupy Wall Street protesters and other related occupy movements across the country.
Hopefully, the will take exactly the opposite position on the SMR petition. We don’t need to have the white house involved in a pending case going to the Supreme Court.
Can you please clarify your words? I’m certain I misunderstood. Are you trying to say that the white house should not intervene? Do you rather suggest SMR remain behind bars for the rest of his life? I don’t get it. Please explain.
The most I expect from their response is: “The president and his staff are looking into the matter very seriously and should there be any findings of concern, the appropriate steps will be taken bla bla bla….”
Only Hashem can save Sholom Mordechai.
So basically, they want to steal around a Trillion Dollars, more than the entire nation’s collective credit card debt, to somehow stimulate the economy?! This is stealing – from investors who collectively own the debt through their retirement accounts, pensions and mutual funds and taxpayers who backed the government loans in the first place.
The reason we are in this mess is because home buyers essentially did the same exact thing, they stopped paying for mortgages they could not afford. What these idiots are proposing is just like asking for all banks to simply give away all bad mortgages. It would destroy our economy and many if not most of the world’s economy to do this.
Please sign the petition to Impeach Obama because of his anti-American policies and because he is actually a dual Indonesian citizen because he went to school there and is therefore unfit for the Presidency.