In case you missed it, DNC Chair Jaime Harrison and DNC Senior Advisor Cedric Richmond have been blitzing the airwaves to highlight President Biden’s historic action on targeted student loan debt relief. The DNC is reminding voters that there’s a clear choice in the midterm election between Democrats who are building a better America for working families, and MAGA Republicans who continue to side with special interests to push an extreme agenda that would cost families.
Harrison: “Democrats are doing something that, Joy, that we don’t always do well. Which is, we are defining the Republicans for their extremism, but we’re also out there selling about the issues about how we have delivered. Just look at Joe Biden on the student loans – not only did he deliver on his campaign promise – he overdelivered in terms of what he’s doing for the Pell Grant program and those folks who receive Pell Grants. And this is just one of so many things: the Inflation Reduction act, the Chips Act, the PACT act, the Violence Against Women Act. We can go on and on, and on how Democrats – Joe Biden and Kamala Harris – have delivered in these two years.”
Harrison: “What we heard from Goldman Sachs today, who released an analysis that basically said, that this is going to have an almost zero impact on inflation. So this is going to be a good thing for the American people, this is going to be a good thing for working people who’ve worked hard each and every day to make ends meet. And even those folks, my mom, who didn’t get an opportunity to go to college, but she worked hard to make sure I could, said this: she said, ‘I’m so proud of Joe Biden. From prescription drugs to student loans, he’s been working for average, hardworking people’ … It’s now time that we have someone in the White House who’s fighting for everyday people in this country.”
Richmond: “Well, I would just remind everyone, that – one – The president made this promise on the campaign trail, and he did win. The second thing I will remind them is that 90% of the benefits go to those people who make under $75,000 a year, and that is working-class America. And we wanted to make sure that we help working families. Let’s think about this. It’s not a zero sum game. When we talk about plumbers, we talk about electricians and carpenters and truck drivers. A lot of them have children who are in fact in school, who would benefit from this. But the second thing is, we as a country, we tell people all the time, education is the best way to lift yourself out of poverty. And then the cost of education is so high that it bars so many people from getting there, then when they get it, we say that homeownership is the best way to transfer wealth from generation to generation, but they can’t in fact buy homes because they’re saddled with student loan debt. And so what we’re doing here is empowering people to continue to get that education, lift themselves out of poverty, free up money so that they can buy into the American Dream of homeownership and have something to pass along. And those homes will need plumbers and contractors and all of those things. So what the president always says is America is not a zero sum game. Someone doesn’t have to do bad for someone to do good. And that’s what the president is delivering on.”
Richmond: “And what this is going to do, is help those families and those students, 90% of them make $75,000 or less, this is going to help them and I just think that this was an answer that they wanted and they went out looking for how to get there. But it’s, I believe, inaccurate, other economists say the same thing and once again this is helping. 90% of the people make less than $75,000, so many of them are Pell Grant eligible. Which means in order to be Pell Grant eligible you had to have exceptional need in borrowing money and so we are helping working families by doing this and I think it was the appropriate thing to do. I think the president spent a lot of time ensuring that he could double the amount for Pell Grant recipients and I think it was well worth the wait with the result that we got.”
The post DNC Chair Jaime Harrison and DNC Senior Advisor Cedric Richmond Tout President Biden’s Historic Action on Student Loan Debt Relief appeared first on Democrats.