Gov't employees exempt from student loan rate increase?

While government regulations make it more difficult for private employers to attract skilled workers with competitive benefits packages, the federal bureaucracy is getting another boost for its own recruitment. In case the average higher pay and pension plans don't interest you, students with loan debt are getting another perk.

Via Forbes:

Amid all the wailing about college loans and interest rates on those loans potentially doubling, comes the news that some federal employees will be shielded from any increase altogether.

As USA Today put it in a recent report, some federal workers and congressional staff will be protected from higher interest rates on student debt given the desire among federal lawmakers “to make government jobs more appealing to job candidates who would earn more in the private sector.” There’s so much wrong with the latter that it’s hard to know where to begin. Suffice it to say, efforts to make government work more desirable do major damage to basic economics. [...]

So lawmakers voted their staffs and other federal workers sweetheart loan deals on the backs of taxpayers? This vandalizes basic economics simply because the low-risk, negative value-added work of the modern federal government is supposed to be undesirable. Adding insult to injury, the latter has occurred in concert with federal pay that increasingly dwarfs that enjoyed in the private sector despite the truth that a federal job remains the closest thing to ‘lifetime appointment’ that exists in our uncertain world.

It’s bad enough news that student loan debt provided by taxpayers is rising. But truly bothersome is that politicians (they should be required to acknowledge how they voted) have in typical fashion ensured that a national problem won’t impact their own, let alone their ability to attract workers to increasingly serve their needs, as opposed to those of the U.S. taxpayer.