This from the NY Times describing the Senate Republican blockage of the effort to keep the interest rate on student loans low. I have abstracted the rationale, but you can certainly read the entire article if you are looking for some other explanation.
But they oppose the Senate Democrats’ proposal to pay for a one-year extension by changing tax law that currently allows some wealthy taxpayers to avoid paying Social Security and Medicare taxes by classifying their pay as dividends, not cash income.
“They want to raise taxes on people who are creating jobs when we are still recovering from the greatest recessionsince the Great Depression,” said Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, who instead wanted to pay for it by eliminating a preventive health care fund in President Obama’s health care law.