As a Democrat I CANNOT Support Biden after he forgives student debt

SouthernmostIllini wrote:

Flagpole wrote:

1) Yes, Biden is not Trump, and that's all I need. Americans voted him in as a vote AGAINST Trump, and as far as I'm concerned, he could do absolutely NOTHING as President (but he is actually accomplishing quite a lot), and I would be satisfied with that. Trump was and continues to be a serious threat to our Democratic Republic, and that is paramount to anything else.

2) Yes, Trump supporters are out of their minds. Every single one of them, and it doesn't matter what rationale they use to support him. He's a serial liar, a criminal, an autocrat, and he doesn't follow the rule of law or respect ANY political norms (and no, that's not a positive). He invited and incited insurrectionists to overturn a fair election, and now we find out he STOLE classified and Top Secret documents from the Federal Government, and not accidentally...willfully. Biden would not and will not ever do those criminal things.

3) There were fewer American jobs when Trump left office than when he began, the first President since Herbert Hoover for that to be the case. The unemployment rate was MUCH higher when he left office than when he began. He cozied up to dictators around the world and fell in love with murderous dictator Kim Jong-un. Biden, on the other hand, has managed SEVERAL significant pieces of legislation that does everything from lowering prescription drug prices to actually supporting our veterans. Oh, and on his priority and order, we took out al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. If you're going to counter with high inflation and gas prices, don't bother. Both were global issues, and both are now falling. Gas can be had for under $3 a gallon in MANY states now, and inflation is dropping as well...along with record low unemployment.

What I truly hate about Democrats…you pass a bunch of bills that are ostensibly designed to fix a problem. Every bill budgets billions and trillions of dollars to try to fix a problem. And yet before one dollar is spent or one problem is fixed you declare victory. DESPITE a demonstrated history of things not getting fixed. Get back to me when Dims actually fix something.

My theory is that Dim fixes address symptoms and not causes…despite what Kamala says. it’s why nothing ever gets fixed and Dims never run out of problems

Precious Roy wrote:

Rasnip wrote:

The explosion of college debt is a serious problem. Reducing some of that burden on students isn't a bad thing, especially as more and more of the employment world wants some college on the resume.

Forgiveness by itself can't be the full solution, though. If you forgive some (let alone all) of student debt without controlling the cost of education, you're just encouraging colleges to increase their fees even more. They've already been outpacing inflation for decades.

So, how about this...pair loan forgiveness with restrictions on the rate of tuition and fees growth that colleges are allowed to implement without consequences.

Example: Higher ed institutions may not increase tuition and fees more than the overall amount of national inflation in the previous year. If they violate this, they are removed from the list of institutions for which students are eligible to have their debt forgiven. Students vote with their wallets and the offending schools are robbed of much of their potential talent.

Colleges are run by big business. Every college's board and dean is full of ex-CEO types. If you restrict their ability to get funding from students, they are going to take a huge sh%t on students by cutting profs in favor of TAs and having all classes be 1500+ people held in concert halls and sports arenas.

Higher ed is extremely expensive in the US primarily because state government funding for higher ed has dropped precipitously over the past 40-50 years thanks to anti-tax advocates who have slashed state government budgets in order to reduce taxes.

The secondary cause of the explosion in tuition has been competition among schools to bring in students. As tuition goes up, students become very selective consumers. When I went to college in the late 1980s early 90s, state schools were cheap and you got what you paid for. Dorms were awful, food was crappy and the facilities were minimal. But students just moved like cattle from their public HS to the big state U in their state and did not consider going out of state. As tuition got more expensive, state schools started competing for out of state students. They did this in two ways. First, they improved facilities with nice new dorms, student centers, fancy gyms, lazy rivers, and fancy new buildings. Second, they started recruiting expensive celebrity faculty and establishing very expensive research institutes to attract students interested in computer science, engineering, medicine etc. The latter actually became a bit of a necessity as private industry learned that it did not have to provide college grads any sort of career development/training if they could get colleges to offer the same sort of training disguised as a masters program tied to a research institute. My dad graduated from MIT in the early 1960s and went to work at Raytheon in a research lab that worked on radar and laser guidance systems. It was like a graduate program with the new college grads divided up into groups who worked with a senior researcher on various projects while being taught advanced research techniques and physics. Today, you would have to do a Phd to get that kind of experience and possibly do post doc work.

The answer to higher education funding is to fund it and not force all the cost on to students. States and the federal government need to fund higher education so that tuition is a nominal burden on students.