Alexandria joined her colleagues last week on the House floor to speak up for canceling student debt:
“I am 32 years old, a first generation college graduate on my mom’s side, and growing up I was told ‘your destiny is to go to college. That’s what’s going to lift our family up and out. That’s our future.’
17 years old when college recruiters started coming to my high school saying ‘this is worth it.’ And we still do that today.”
As a nation, we give 17 year olds — teenagers — the ability and responsibility to sign up for what is often hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. And we think that’s responsible policy?
It’s unacceptable. And, that’s why Alexandria shared her own story with student debt — to highlight the moral failure it is to profit off the insurmountable and crushing educational debt of our nation’s students.
Your story will help us keep up the pressure on President Biden to use his executive authority to finally cancel student loan debt for millions of Americans.
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 as a nation, if we want to remain innovative, and if we want to develop the technological investments necessary to address issues like climate change, we need an educated country.
Our current system actively disincentivizes higher education with its high cost. That’s backwards. And the least we can do — and we have a moral, economic, and political obligation to do — is to cancel student loan debt.
We have seen the benefits that student loan cancellation could have during the year and nine months of the emergency COVID-19 forbearance in effect. It has given people the breathing room to take care of their families and to start investing in their futures.
No person should have to go into debt in order to get an education. It’s wrong. It’s backwards. And, it doesn’t help us as a country.
Your story will help clarify who is being impacted by crushing student loan debt.
We know it’s not a billionaire’s child who is taking out student loans. It’s working- or middle-class people who are trying to make a living.
So, let’s get real, and let’s cancel it.
Thank you,
Team AOC
 |
 |
 |
Email us: [email protected]
This email was sent to [email protected]. Email is the most important way we keep in touch with people like you, so thank you for reading to the end. Small donors like you keep us going. To contribute via check, please address to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for Congress, PO Box 680080, Corona, NY 11368.
Paid for by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for Congress
