Boehner blasts Obama over student loans

WASHINGTON -- House Speaker John Boehner said yesterday President Barack Obama was acting "beneath the dignity of the White House" when he traveled around the country this week to pressure Republicans to help keep federal student loan costs from ballooning. Boehner said Obama should reimburse taxpayers for the trips' costs.

The Ohio Republican spoke a day after Obama wrapped up visits to three college campuses in North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa. At each stop, he gave campaign-like speeches lambasting the GOP and talking up election-year efforts by Democrats to keep subsidized Stafford loan interest rates from doubling in July to 6.8 percent -- an increase that would affect 7.4 million students.

"For the president to make a campaign issue and then to travel to three battleground states and go to three large college campuses on taxpayers' money to try to make this some political issue is pathetic," Boehner told reporters. "And his campaign ought to be reimbursing the Treasury for the cost of this trip."

White House spokesman Jay Carney defended the travel as an effort to press an important policy issue. He said that by taking a high-profile stand in favor of extending the student loan rate, Obama succeeded in winning Republican support.

"It is eminently obvious that the president was out talking about a policy issue," Carney said. "This is official business. And he did it effectively."

Boehner said Obama was charging the Treasury for a trip in which he targeted Republicans for ignoring a problem that GOP lawmakers were already working on. He also accused Obama of trying to concoct "fake fights."

The Boeing 747 that is usually used as Air Force One costs $179,750 an hour to operate, the Pentagon says.

Carney countered that Republicans acted in "Johnny-come-lately" fashion and were not inclined to back a continuation of the low rates until Obama made it a public issue.

"The American people understand, in a way that I guess that the speaker doesn't, that education is an essential element of the American economy," he said.

On a day in which both sides used the student loan fight to bolster their standing with voters and cast the other side negatively, the leader of House Democrats accused Republicans of writing a $5.9 billion bill that would raid women's programs to keep the student loan interest rates from rising.