[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 116 (Thursday, July 11, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4780-S4782]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           STUDENT LOAN DEBT

  Mr. THUNE. Madam President, the Democratic Party's motto this year 
might as well be ``Free Stuff''--free

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healthcare, free college, free debt relief, free childcare, and free 
income. The problem, of course, is that the old adage ``There is no 
such thing as a free lunch'' is 100 percent true.
  Healthcare has to be paid for by someone. College has to be paid for 
by someone. Democrats, of course, think they should all be paid for--
and often controlled--by the government, but what they don't like to 
talk about as much is that the government has to get its money from 
somewhere, and that somewhere is the American people.
  If you ask Democrats how they are going to pay for all of this free 
stuff, what they will say is, they will tax the rich. The problem is, 
there simply aren't enough people to even come close to paying for the 
Democrats' free programs and expansive policy proposals.
  Every year, Forbes magazine reports the combined net worth of the 400 
richest people in the United States, but if you took every penny from 
every one of those people, it would be a tiny drop in the bucket next 
to the cost of the Democrats' proposals.
  Free healthcare alone--and these are my conservative estimates--would 
cost $32 trillion over 10 years. Taking every penny from the richest 
people in the United States wouldn't even cover 1 year of that 
proposal. In fact, you could take every penny from every billionaire in 
the entire world, and it would still only cover roughly 28 percent or 
less than 3 years of Democrats' Medicare for All proposal.
  That is just free healthcare. That is not the Green New Deal or 
guaranteed income or free childcare or anything else. What if we move 
away from billionaires? How about millionaires--even millionaires? What 
if we taxed every household in the United States making more than 
$200,000 at a 100-percent rate for 10 years? Well, we would still 
barely have enough to cover free healthcare, much less Democrats' other 
proposals.
  Let's look at one of the Democrats', what I would say, relatively 
smaller proposals, and that is student loan forgiveness and free 
college. No one can deny that student loan debt is a problem in this 
country. Many graduates emerge with tens of thousands of dollars' worth 
of debt that they struggle to repay, and it burdens them for years. It 
is a growing problem. Ways to alleviate this burden and encourage more 
affordable education are conversations we need to have, but the free 
college and debt elimination solutions offered by two leading 
Democratic Senators are no solutions at all.
  The U.S. Government is not swimming in money. We are deeply in debt, 
and we already need to shore up existing programs, like Social Security 
and Medicare, both of which are on shaky financial footing.
  Paying for a college education for millions of Americans is not 
something the government can easily afford. The Senator from Vermont's 
plan for free college and student loan forgiveness would cost 
approximately $2.2 trillion over 10 years. That may not sound like much 
when compared to Democrats' budget-busting plan for government-run 
healthcare, but it is still a lot of money.
  The entire Federal budget for 2019 is less than $5 trillion, and that 
is supposing the Senator from Vermont's proposal comes in on budget, 
which seems unlikely. For one thing, when you offer something for free, 
demand for it generally increases.
  The Senator from Vermont is making his estimate based on today's 
numbers, but what happens when demand skyrockets? The Federal 
Government can be on the hook for far more than the Senator estimates, 
and these proposals would do anything but incentivize colleges and 
universities to lower the cost of tuition.
  Both the Senators who have proposed free college and debt elimination 
plans this year have said they will pay for it. The Senator from 
Vermont would impose a financial transactions tax, while the Senator 
from Massachusetts would impose what she calls an ultramillionaire's 
tax on the very wealthy, but as one Wall Street Journal editor 
highlights in a recent column, this is unlikely to cover the costs:

       Financial-transaction taxes chronically underperform 
     estimates of the revenue they'll generate, and wealth taxes 
     are so ineffective that even France scrapped its version in 
     despair in 2017. Much heavier middle-class taxation is what 
     feeds European social-welfare States.

  It goes on to say: And ``much heavier middle-class taxation'' is 
likely to be the end result of Democratic proposals, like free college 
and student loan forgiveness.
  Even leaving aside the cost, let's talk about the merits of the 
Democrats' proposals--for starters, the sheer unfairness of these 
plans. Let's suppose one of these proposals becomes law. Now, suppose 
you are someone who has lived frugally for years, and you have just 
finished paying off $30,000 in student loans. You are not going to get 
a penny back from the Democrats. Meanwhile, someone who has just 
incurred that $30,000 in debt is going to get it completely wiped out. 
There is no need to live frugally or think about paying off the debt 
you have freely incurred; the debt will just be gone.

  Then there is the fact that Democratic proposals for free college and 
debt forgiveness are not going to solve the education debt problem.
  The director of the Education Policy Program at New America--not a 
conservative think tank, by the way--recently published a column in the 
New York Times, where he noted that the proposals for free public 
college from the Senator from Vermont and the Senator from 
Massachusetts would ``not eliminate future student debt--not even 
close. That's because most student loan debt isn't taken out to attend 
undergraduate programs at public colleges and universities. Most loans 
are used for private colleges, for-profit colleges, and most of all, 
graduate school.''
  As the column points out, that is not something that free public 
undergraduate education will fix. In fact, the column notes: ``The day 
after Senator Sanders `hits the reset button,' as he put it in the news 
conference, the national student debt odometer would begin rapidly 
spinning again.''
  So what can be done to help those struggling with student loan debt? 
What can we do to help while still maintaining fiscal responsibility 
and preserving a respect for honoring the commitments you have made? 
One Democratic Senator and I have a proposal that could definitely 
help. The senior Senator from Virginia and I reintroduced our Employer 
Participation in Repayment Act earlier this year. Our legislation would 
amend the Educational Assistance Program to permit employers to make 
tax-free payments on their employees' student loans. Right now, 
employers can contribute to their employees' tuition if their employees 
are currently taking classes, but they can't help employees with 
education debts they have already incurred. Our bill would allow them 
to help with employees' already-existing student loan debt.
  This would be a win-win situation. It would be a win for employees 
who would get help paying off their student loans, and it would be a 
win for employers which would have a new option for attracting and 
retaining talented workers. Our bill would not be a silver bullet, but 
it would certainly help ease the pain of paying back student loans for 
a number of young Americans.
  I also look forward to seeing other efforts to help alleviate the 
burden of student loan debt in a feasible and fiscally responsible way. 
I know Republicans on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions 
Committee are working on legislation to make it easier to pay back 
student loans.
  Another big thing we can do is to make sure that graduates have 
access to good-paying jobs. Thanks to Republican economic policies over 
the past 2 years, our economy is thriving, good jobs are being created, 
and wages are rising at the strongest pace in a decade. All of that can 
go a long way toward enabling people to pay off their debt, and 
Republicans are committed to building on the economic success that we 
are experiencing and expanding opportunities even further.
  ``Free College'' makes a great bumper sticker, but it doesn't make 
very good policy. We need to address the problem of student debt 
without weighing down the economy or hard-working Americans with 
massive new government spending and massive new taxes. The Employer 
Participation in Repayment Act is a step in the right direction, and I 
hope to see it receive a vote in the very near future.

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  I yield the floor.

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