Issue Position: Make High Quality Public Education and Debt-Free College Our Highest Priorities

Issue Position

There is no issue more personal to me, or more important to our families than education. My own story started in a trailer park watching my divorced mom work hard for nearly ten years to get her teaching degree. Her perseverance set a strong example for me, and I used my own education to start a career, advance to the head of Global Human Resources for a Fortune 500 company and eventually marry a Minnesota teacher. My wife and I now have four boys, and we're teaching them the importance of using education to secure their futures.

Education can be the great equalizer. Every family in this country must have access to high quality public education, including pre-K, as well as have the opportunity for a college education without leaving our families with massive debt. Education, from kindergarten to college, is the key to securing a strong economic future for Minnesota families and global competitiveness for our nation. That means we must prioritize funding for public education; we must let our teachers teach, and value them by providing them the resources that they need to be successful. We must fully fund special education in this country and expand tax-credits for affordable, quality child care.

As I travel the district, one of the biggest issues our families face is the cost of higher education and massive student loan debt. If we want to remain globally competitive and help all of our kids fulfill their promise, we need to build an affordable higher education system. This includes both encouraging public colleges to find ways to lower costs and increase federal funding for the neediest students, providing incentives for states to invest in higher education and keeping tuition down. We can't continue to saddle our kids with the tens of thousands of dollars of debt as they enter the workforce. I will work to stop the federal government from charging our students higher interest rates than the Wall Street banks pay and change federal law to allow the generation that already accumulated a mountain of debt to refinance those loans at lower rates. Under Republican leadership the Congressional conversation about college affordability has been marked by playing games with student loan rates and making college harder, not easier, for middle class families to afford.

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