Cancel Student Loan Debt
Floor Speech
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Mr. GOMEZ. Madam Speaker, I thank Mr. Bowman for organizing this Special Order hour.
I like to describe the student loan debt crisis as a boot on the neck of the American Dream and on the neck of millions of Americans who make that American Dream a reality. And that is because higher education is the one way that we achieve the American Dream. It is what I did.
I am the youngest of six of immigrant parents from Mexico. My two parents never made it past third grade. Both could read but not really write. One of the things that they knew is that coming here would give me that opportunity to change my life. I was fortunate enough to be born here. My brother Javier and I were born here, and I was one of the first to graduate from college.
It allowed me to believe that I could do more, to believe I could be part of this country, and about that American promise. You come here, you believe in our values, you work hard, you give back, you are going to have a place, and you are going to succeed; and the next generation, your kids and your grandkids, are going to do even better.
I am fortunate. I got to go to a community college after I worked at Subway and Target, and then I transferred to UCLA, graduated in the top 10 percent of my class. Then I got my master's of public policy from Harvard University.
I ended up walking away with $15,000 in debt from undergrad, which wasn't bad. I thought it was a lot of money. When you graduate, and you are only getting paid $24,000 a year, it was a lot of money. And I walked away with a little bit over $65,000 from the Kennedy School for my master's degree. And don't forget, a lot of students also have credit card debt on top of that.
But you know what, I am fortunate that I got to go to school. I am fortunate that I have been able to change my life. I am fortunate that I have been able to get jobs that provide me health insurance for the first time in my family's history, and that my debt isn't as crippling as the current generation's debt.
The current generation's debt after the Great Recession ballooned to historic proportions. That is why you have trillions of dollars in student loan debt on the backs of 47 million Americans.
You know what? These are dreamers; these are people who believe in the American Dream, that say, you know what, I have been told, go to school, work hard. And you know what, it doesn't matter, if you get into the best school possible, take out that debt because it is going to come back tenfold. In the past, that was the case.
But we don't see that now. We see that the debt that has been put on the backs--because we underinvested in higher education, we underinvested in K-12--is crippling people to living their version of the American Dream.
It is so severe, and it pains me and it depresses me, that people are actually are deciding, I would rather not go to college because I don't want to have debt. Think about that. That is the decision people are making now, I would rather not have the best opportunity to achieve the American Dream because the amount of debt will prevent me from living that American Dream once I graduate.
I think that is shameful because these are the folks that are renewing this idea to live a more just and perfect Union, to refresh that idea generation upon generation. And it is unfortunate because who does it impact? It often impacts immigrants, people of color, Blacks, Latinos, single mothers, single parents. They are the ones that are taking on higher and higher burdens of debt.
Then when they graduate, they sometimes get jobs that don't pay them that well because they want to give back. They care about their communities. We saw in a recent New York Times article that graduates from a school of social work were graduating with $112,000 in debt but getting paid $50,000. This is something that we see time and time again.
If people want to believe in the American Dream, then they have to care about canceling student loan debt; to refresh the potential of millions of Americans to buy their first house, to raise children, to start a business, to grow our economy. I believe that this is something that Americans from all sides of the aisle could agree on.
Madam Speaker, I am calling on the President to cancel $50,000 of student loan debt in the next year.
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