This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, October 31st, 2011.

I'm Caleb Brown.

President Obama wants to give college students another break on their student loans.

It's one of the key points of

protest for Occupy Wall Street. Problem is it's exactly that kind of higher

read bailout that's making university education so expensive.

Neil McCluskey, author of feds in the classroom, comments.

It is pretty easy to conclude if you look at the details of the student loan relief that the administration is offering.

It's pretty easy to conclude that it really is a pitch to get young people

to vote for President Obama in 2012, to get out there and campaign for him in 2012,

and I think to have the Occupy Wall Street folks

for whom student debt has been a big issue to get them saying good things about

the administration. That said I think if they looked at the details of this

proposal they're not going to be all that thrilled about it.

Okay, well what are the details?

So there's some subtleties in here, but basically what the administration is doing is two things.

It's saying, one one if you have both direct loans which are

loans that come right from the Federal Treasury and guaranteed loans which are

loans that are no longer being originated, but people still have,

where you go to a bank and you get a loan, but the federal government says if you default,

they'll just pay the bank for you.

If you have those two types of loans you can consolidate them and if

...