President Barack Obama but really think that recent graduates are stupid. Honestly, he thinks that graduates out there that are suffering under their crushing debt obligations in this economy where there are not enough jobs to go around, are so stupid that they don’t even know what in the world they want.

Occupy Wall Street protests are saying that educational debt has always been a big part of them. And today, President Obama will apparently announce the ”new” programs to help students in debt Or, at lease, he want the media reports to believe they are ”new” People like debt-saddled law students, and others who have actually been paying attention, will soon recognize that there is very little that is ”new” about these programs.

Actually, Obama seems to honestly think that students and recent graduates wouldn’t be so angry if they really knew about all the programs already in place.

It’s honesty just really annoying. If the Obama administration had actually been paying attention, then they would know that recent graduates want a meaningful reform, and not just some piecemeal incremental efforts that we have all seen so far.

We have all been pushing Obama for years to do something to ameliorate these student debts. So we can all tell you that Obama’s plans represent no change from how the administration has handled this issue since the beginning of the recession.

This is what Obama had to say according to the New York Times:

”At a press briefing Tuesday afternoon, Melody Barnes, director of the Domestic Policy Council, said the president would use his executive authority to expand the existing income-based repayment program with a ”Pay as you Earn” option that would allow graduates to pay 10 percent of their discretionary income for 20 years and have the rest of their federal student loan debt forgiven. That plan would start next year…
The lower caps of the new program were scheduled to go into effect for new borrowers in 2014, but, Ms. Barnes said, ”because we know the frustration of crushing loan burdens, we have to act now.”
Ms. Barnes notes that over the last month, more that 30,000 people had signed a petition on the We the People platform at whitehouse.gov, asking for relief on student debt.
”It’s a message heard loud and clear,” she said.

So, please be sure to call this speech exactly what it is. It’s not Obama offering new programs, he is not proposing new legislation, and he is not offering debt ”relief”. These new plans definitely don’t represent hope for a change from what already available. With his response to public protest about the rising cost of education and the crushing effect of student loan debt, Obama is basically just offering more of the same exact stuff.