Student Loan Giveaway

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROSE. Mr. Speaker, today, I rise in opposition to President Biden's student loan scam and urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote to override President Biden's veto of H.J. Res. 45, which would overturn this ridiculous misuse of taxpayer dollars and transfer of wealth from the working class to our country's most wealthy and educated citizens.

Mr. Speaker, middle Tennessee is home to many hardworking, blue- collar workers who do everything they can to provide for their families and live within their means. Many of them made tough decisions to forego attending college to pursue careers in skilled trades like becoming an electrician, a plumber, or carpenter, each valuable skill sets and careers that keep our communities running and provide services we could never live without.

In fact, 66 percent of the folks in Tennessee's Sixth Congressional District have no college degree. This, along with those who responsibly took out student loans and paid them back, means that an estimated 759,000 people whom I represent are ineligible for the Biden administration's proposed student loan giveaway.

To put this into perspective, the total population of Tennessee's Sixth Congressional District is 768,525. A whopping 98.7 percent of folks whom I represent will never see a penny of the billions being wasted on this ill-guided proposal. What is even worse is that it will cost the folks of my district an estimated $1.53 billion, or almost $2,000 per individual.

At a time when the U.S. national debt has surpassed $32 trillion for the first time in our country's history, meaning that each citizen owes almost $100,000 of the national debt, the last thing Americans need, and that Tennesseans need, is another 2,000 in debt to pay for other people's decisions to pursue college degrees.

Mr. Speaker, when we debated this legislation on the floor previously, I said that America is a country built on the idea of freedom. Freedom does not mean freedom from individual responsibility, but freedom from unreasonable constraints. By forcing Tennesseans to foot the bill for the college degrees of wealthy lawyers and doctors in New York and California, President Biden is chipping away at our freedom.

Back home in my district, where the median household income is $57,373, President Biden's student loan bailout will cost almost an entire paycheck for the hardworking folks of Tennessee's Sixth District.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I encourage the President and those who support this transfer of wealth from blue-collar folks of Tennessee to coastal elites to take a visit to my constituents and tell them this news that their hard-earned paychecks will be going to some of the most well- educated and wealthy Americans in our country.

I have a feeling that a lot of folks who support this policy would have a hard time going door-to-door taking paychecks away from people without college degrees so that those with college degrees can reap the rewards and benefits of the President's policy.

Mr. Speaker, let's call this proposal what it is: An election-year gimmick that has no chance of ever becoming law through the normal procedures of being passed by the House and the Senate. Even some Democrats understand this policy is just plain wrong and that is why they joined Republicans to pass this legislation, which would have stopped this proposal in its track.

Now is our chance to override the President's veto. Let's hope more commonsense and fiscally responsible Democrats will join us to send a message to the President to reverse course on this disastrous decision.

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