By Marian Wang, ProPublica

The federal government must double down on grants to low-income students and dramatically simplify the system of student loans, says a new report by the non-partisan New America Foundation.

The report, released on Tuesday, lays out more than 30 recommendations for fixing the nation's increasingly strained system of paying for college, chief among them a more substantial and permanent investment in direct aid to students through Pell grants. The government should make the funding for the Pell program an entitlement in the federal budget, shielding it from annual wrangling, and should boost the maximum amount of individual grants, the report says.

It also proposes that the government create a system of incentives aimed at realigning how college use institutional aid dollars: Those with few low-income students and high tuition after discounts would be required to match a portion of Pell dollars with institutional aid; schools with many low-income students that meet a required graduation rate would get bonuses.

The New America Foundation's report was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as part of a larger initiative to explore policy recommendations on ways to restructure and reform the financial aid system.

Beyond its recommendations on grants, the report suggests a wholesale overhaul of programs for student loans.

We've reported on the federal Parent Plus loan program, and how the lack of loan limits allows families to borrow more than they can reasonably afford to cover ever-increasing college costs. The government should end the Plus program, the report argues, as it "can encourage families to over-borrow and provides colleges with a convenient source of funds if they wish to raise their prices."

The federal government should stick to one loan program – the main federal loan program known as the Stafford loan, the report suggests. It also suggests that the many different repayment plans currently available be replaced with one that bases monthly payments on a percentage of income – a modified version of some existing plans. 

The report also offers ideas to reform day-to-day handling of student loan payments. Errors in the servicing of student loans often frustrate borrowers and exacerbate the difficulties of repayment, especially for those whose loans were shuffled to a group of new nonprofit servicing companies.

As we've noted, these companies won a carve-out from Congress in 2010 that guaranteed them an opportunity to get in on servicing federal student loans. The report advocates ending this carve-out, arguing it "has made the federal student loan program more complicated and costly than it should be," and that all servicing contracts should be awarded through competitive bidding.

See the full report for more details.

In his never-ending quest to make America like him, Mitt Romney talked to the Columbus Dispatch this week about healthcare. Probably the most troublesome part of the healthcare plan that Romney doesn't have yet, (Okay, this is all he has thus far.) is eliminating Obamacare’s preexisting condition guaranteed coverage. How does an evil vulture capitalist deal with such an abomination?

Romney, in a meeting with The Dispatch’s editorial board, said those who currently don’t carry insurance would have a chance to make a “choice” to be covered without fear of being denied. But he didn’t specify how long Americans would have to make that choice, or what would happen to those who chose not to be covered and later fell sick.

A clever crafting of words, enough to make it sound as if he actually has some sort of plan, but without any details at all. Romney may well be referring to the choice one has to purchase anything on their own, it isn't a plan at all, so of course there are no details.

“We don’t have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we just say to you, ‘Tough luck, you’re going to die when you have your heart attack,’  ” he said as he offered more hints as to what he would put in place of “Obamacare,” which he has pledged to repeal.

“No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it’s paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital. We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.”

I know those of you who have ever been uninsured, or underinsured and had the misfortune to need medical treatment are shaking your heads and thinking "What a moron." But, he really said that. Nobody dies in their apartment anymore because they don’t have health insurance. Well, unfortunately 45,000 a year do:

Via:

Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year -- one every 12 minutes -- in large part because they lack health insurance and can not get good care, Harvard Medical School researchers found in an analysis...

So yes, Mitt Romney, Americans without health insurance do die in their apartments or on the street if they have no home, and as they can't get preventative care in the emergency room, or treatment for chronic illness, with you in the White House they would be dying faster than one every 12 minutes!

Did you notice how this "go to the emergency room for health care" plan sounds a lot like Romney's other plans? Say education, for instance. Romney says he would cut pell grants for college students. What is he going to replace them with? He says go home and borrow money from your parents.

This takes us back to Romney's disconnect from mainstream America. He doesn't have a clue how the world operates for the majority of Americans. He has no real plans or policies that would help the majority of Americans. The worst part of it all is that he doesn't really even give a damn.

Paul Ryan is the mastermind behind the extreme GOP budget plan. It's a plan Mitt Romney endorses.

But what does that budget mean for America? The GOP budget plan hurts seniors, it hurts middle-class families, and it hurts students. All to pay for tax cuts for those at the top..

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan: back to the failed top-down policies that crashed our economy.

Paul Ryan’s top-down budget plan is a sham

Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney both support trillions in budget-busting tax cuts for millionaires that will result in tax hikes on the middle class and deep cuts in education and other investments we need to grow. Ryan’s extreme budget plan, which Mitt Romney has embraced, would make deep spending cuts now to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, which would weaken the recovery and cost the economy jobs.

According to Harvard economist Jeffrey Liebman, based on Mitt Romney’s own projections on the impact of deep spending cuts on the economy, Paul Ryan’s budget plan could cost the U.S. more than 1 million jobs.

Paul Ryan’s plan would raise taxes on the middle class and cut taxes for the wealthy

Ryan’s extreme budget plan would benefit the wealthy while raising taxes on middle-class families, slowing our economic recovery and hurting seniors and the middle class.

Deep tax giveaways for the wealthy:

Paul Ryan’s extreme budget includes a tax “reform” plan that would make the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, and give millionaires an additional tax cut worth over $250,000 a year. Paying for these tax cuts for the most fortunate families would require higher taxes on the middle class, gutting investments in our future, and ending Medicare as we know it.

Raise taxes on the middle class:

Just like Mitt Romney’s tax plan, middle-class families could pay thousands of dollars more a year in taxes to help fund tax cuts for millionaires. Ryan would cut or eliminate middle-class tax deductions like mortgage interest, charitable contributions, and health premiums.

Paul Ryan’s plan would gut middle-class investments

To pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest, Paul Ryan would gut investments critical to middle-class security.

This includes cutting Pell Grant scholarships for nearly 10 million students, cutting clean energy investments by 19%, and slowing scientific and medical research by eliminating tens of thousands of grants.

Paul Ryan’s plan would end Medicare as we know it

Paul Ryan’s extreme budget would end Medicare as we know it, turning it into a voucher program which would increase seniors’ health costs by $6,350 a year. Ryan has also proposed a plan that would have privatized Social Security, subjecting seniors’ retirement security to the whims of the stock market.

Paul Ryan is severely conservative

Like Mitt Romney, Ryan’s severely conservative positions are out of touch with most Americans’ values. He would take us backward on women’s health and equal rights.

Paul Ryan would take us backward on women’s health:

Ryan cosponsored a bill that could ban in-vitro fertilization, as well as many common forms of birth control, including the pill. It could also ban all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest. He supported letting states prosecute women who have abortions and doctors who perform them.

Paul Ryan would take us backward on equal rights:

Ryan voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which helps women fight for equal pay for equal work. He voted against repealing the discriminatory policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and supports writing discrimination into the Constitution by amending it to ban gay marriage.

If this isn't enough information on Paul Ryan, and what Romney & Ryan would mean for America, let me sum it up briefly:

Any questions?

Note: No senior citizens were harmed in the making of this video.