Hannah Hecht's Blog

This week, President Obama presented his “Race to the Top” plan for financial aid to college students. The plan will essentially push colleges to lower tuition by creating incentives for those colleges that give more aid. The first article was written from a more conservative point of view. It pointed out the shortcomings of the plan much more than it emphasized the need for educational reform. The second article was much more interesting to me. Instead of focusing on conflict between the two parties, it worked to actually solve a problem by pointing out complications that may arise and explaining how to fix them.

I had a kind of mixed response to this week’s reading. One of the things that drives me crazy about the current American political system is the utter lack of cooperation in Washington. Whenever either party tries to make some sort of reform, the other party vehemently opposes it, no matter what. The problem in Washington is not that conservatives and liberals have bad ideas and don’t know how to run the country. The problem is that they won’t come to any bipartisan plan or compromise on any issue. On the rare occasions that a plan actually is passed, like the Obama health care bill, it gets so picked apart by the opposite side that by the time it is instated, the plan has been reduced to nothing.

The first article states, “House Republicans have also signaled their desire to deny Obama any legislative wins in an election year.” This idea is completely maddening. If the point of the legislature is to improve the country, why would Republicans (or anyone for that matter) deny every plan Obama presents, no matter the merit of the plan, only because Obama presents it. According to the article, both parties agree that there needs to be some sort of reform in higher education. Why does it have to be the “Republican plan for tuition reform” or the “Democratic plan for tuition reform?” Instead, both parties ought to be more like the author of the second article. They need to agree that there’s a problem, write a plan, and then work together to amend the plan into something functional. If this pointless attacking and argument between the parties continues, it won’t matter who wins the 2012 election, our legislature will continue to accomplish nothing.