Hi friend,

Today I'm going to talk about college debt. To set the stage, it's important to understand the scale of the problem: $1.75 trillion dollars in debt, spread over 48 million borrowers.

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Thats about 1/15 the size of the national debt ($26 trillion), and 50% more than all auto debt in the US (about $1 trillion). In terms of numbers, 1/6 Americans over 18 have college debt.?

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So it's a big deal.

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How do we fix it?

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Not by debt forgiveness. I'm not opposed to Biden's $10k/$20k forgiveness plan, but it's really important to understand that program was a Band-Aid.?

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The real problem is three-fold:?

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1) The cost of university has skyrocketed over the past 59 years. It's time for the government to crack down on private AND public universities with high administrative costs and "vanity projects." Student fees should be paying for faculty (professors) and facilities. It's time for the federal government to take a more active role in controlling costs, rather than just adding more money to the problem.

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2) Student loans currently assign the risk to the borrower rather than the lender. Unlike every other type of loan, student loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. It doesn't make sense - and it feels morally repugnant - to force an 18-year-old to make such a life-altering economic choice - that the can never take back. Though it was lost in the talk about debt forgiveness, there is a solution here: the Biden administration is proposing a series of rule changes that would make loans much fairer for students. Read more here, under Part 3. It's great. (https://studentaid.gov/debt-relief-announcement/)

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3) Too many students are going to college rather than pursuing vocational degrees or working in the trades. The single focus on 4-year colleges over the past 30 years has been a mistake. There are certain policy changes we can make, such as expanding Federal Student Loans and Pell Grants to vocational schools is a good start. However, this will also take a cultural change: not going to college doesn't make you a failure. I was guilty of this: I judged my brother for dropping out of UC Davis as a physics major to become a car mechanic, but he makes good money and he likes his job.

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This is a long email, but it's also a complicated topic. It's important for politicians to put real thought into policy, rather than just make nice-sounding statements that never gets to the root of the problem.

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Doug LaMalfa has no interest in solving college debt. Instead, he tried to stoke class warfare when Biden's Debt Relief Plan was announced: claiming that "blue collar workers" were going to pay for useless degrees. It was pretty ironic coming from a heavily subsidized rice farmer.

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But then again, Doug tried to overturn the 2020 election based on conspiracy theories. Maybe he should have paid more attention in college himself.

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If you support sensible student debt reforms (and democracy), please support my campaign. Vote. Talk to your neighbors. Donate.?

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Thanks for all the support so far,

Max

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