Cancel Student Loan Debt

Floor Speech

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Ms. OCASIO-CORTEZ. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. We are here, Bronx boogie down caucus checking in, yerr caucus checking in, student loan cancellation caucus checking in because this is getting ridiculous. This is ridiculous.

I am 32 years old. I am a first-generation college graduate on my mom's side, and growing up, I was told, since I was a child: Your destiny is to go to college. That is what is going to lift our family up and out. That is our future. That is what we are here to accomplish.

I was 17 years old when college recruiters started coming to my high school saying: This is worth it.

We still do that today because it is teenagers signing up for what is often hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, and we just do that, and our government allows that. We give 17-year-olds the ability to sign on and sign up for $100,000 worth of debt, and we think that is responsible policy.

I am 32 years old now. I have over $17,000 in student loan debt. I didn't go to graduate school because I knew that getting another degree would drown me in debt that I would never be able to surpass. This is unacceptable.

Not only that, but 65 percent of all jobs in this country require an education beyond high school; first-generation college students are two times as likely to report being behind on student loan payments; and 63 percent of borrowers who made payments with Navient during the COVID forbearance still owe more now than they originally borrowed. There are hundreds of thousands of people in this country who owe more on their student loans now than they did when they first took them out.

We as a country are profiting off of insurmountable and crushing educational debt, and it is wrong. It is absolutely wrong. Four years after graduation, 48 percent of Black students owe an average of 12.5 percent more than they originally borrowed.

But this isn't just an issue of a debt crisis. This is an educational crisis in the United States of America. If we want to remain competitive, if we want to remain innovative, and if we need the technological investments necessary to address things like climate change, we need an educated country.

The United States has a policy of actively disincentivizing higher education. We disincentivize people from getting a college or secondary education beyond high school. That is backward. The least we can do--we have a moral obligation, an economic obligation, a political obligation to cancel student loan debt in the United States of America.

We have seen the benefits that this has had during the forbearance alone. It has given people the breathing room to do what they need to do so we can stop writing these ridiculous articles that young people are killing diamond rings, that they are not buying houses, and that they are killing this industry or that, that we are not having children. It is because we are being crushed by immoral debt.

No person should have to go into debt, crushing debt, in order to get an education. It is wrong. It is backward, and it doesn't help us as a country. So I am greatly looking forward to that. I am greatly looking forward to the Biden administration canceling student loan debt and no longer advancing the false narrative that student loan debt is for the privileged.

What a ridiculous assertion. Do we really think that a billionaire's child is taking student loans? Come on. Come on. If you are taking on student loan debt, it is because you are likely a working or middle- class person.

So let's get real. Let's cancel it. It is in the interest of the people. It is in the interest of this country. It is in the interest of our future.

I thank the distinguished Representative from the Bronx and Westchester, Jamaal Bowman, for yielding.

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Ms. OCASIO-CORTEZ. Will the gentleman yield?

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Ms. OCASIO-CORTEZ. And health insurance is too high.

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