[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 96 (Monday, June 6, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2780-S2781]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                           Income Inequality

  Mr. President, this evening I am actually coming to the floor to 
speak about a different subject.
  I saw a report over the weekend, Mr. President, that President Biden 
plans to cancel a significant amount of student college debt, and I 
think it is very important that, before he does that, he considers 
several factors. One is to consider how we got in this sorry state that 
we are in. How did we arrive in this sorry state? How do we put an end 
to the worst parts of our broken lending system? And really 
importantly--and I think fundamentally--how do we create new pathways 
to a living wage for the 70 percent of Americans who don't go to 
college--importantly, how to create new pathways to a living wage for 
the 70 percent of Americans who don't go to college.
  And I think it is important for us, when we are thinking about things 
like this potential policy by the Biden administration, to understand 
the context in which this is happening. For 50 years, we have had an 
economy in this country that has worked really well for the top 10 
percent and poorly for everybody else.
  There were decades and decades and decades that when the economy 
grew, it grew for everybody. But for the last 50 years, when the 
economy has grown, it has grown for the wealthiest people in our 
country at the expense of everybody else. That has been the effect of 
technology. It has been the effect of globalization.
  I think it is long past time for us to admit that a lot of the 
theories that we told ourselves about the importance of privileging 
people who wanted to make stuff as cheaply as possible in China over 
creating productive work here in the United States--like the solar jobs 
that you and I have been talking about--you know, it is time for us to 
think about that and to consider what it would look like to have an 
economy that when it grew, it actually grew for everybody, not just the 
people at the very top.
  I don't think there is any way that, if we have another 50 years like 
the last 50 years, we are going to be able to sustain our democracy. 
That is how important this is. Because when people lose a sense of 
opportunity no matter how hard they work, that is when somebody shows 
up and says: I alone can fix it. You don't need a democracy. You don't 
need the rule of law.
  And that is what we are struggling with. Economic mobility has 
vanished in the United States. And, as a former school superintendent 
of the Denver public schools, I am deeply saddened to say on this floor 
that our education system, far from liberating people from their 
economic circumstances, is actually ratifying those economic 
circumstances. It is compounding the income inequality that we have 
instead of liberating kids from their parents' incomes, because the 
best predictor of your quality of education is the income that your 
parents make, to the point of ruthlessness. And as the rungs of the 
economic ladder have grown wider over time, Americans have found it 
harder and harder and harder to earn a living wage with just a high 
school degree.
  Michael Sandel, who has written a book, which I would recommend 
everybody read, called ``The Tyranny of Merit,'' argues in his book 
that rather than fighting for an economy that actually works for 
everybody--more opportunity, less income inequality--American 
politicians have argued, instead, that the best hedge against economic 
catastrophe in a global economy is to get a college degree. And, to be 
fair, this sometimes works. The 30 percent of Americans who graduate 
with a 4-year degree go on to earn, on average, 1.2 million more 
dollars, Mr. President, over their lifetime than Americans who only 
complete high school.
  The tragic exception to that--the tragic exception to that are Black 
college graduates who, as a result of racism in this country, earn, on 
average, less than White high school graduates. Let me just pause on 
that for a second, just pause on that for a second. On average, if you 
go to college in this country, you will earn $1.2 million more than 
your fellow citizens who just have a high school degree, unless you are 
a Black American, in which case, on average, you will earn less than 
White high school students. I can't think of a more profound indictment 
of our society than that.
  And as more and more Americans applied to college to get ahead in an 
economy where they couldn't find other ways of getting ahead, my 
generation of taxpayers, my generation of citizens, unlike our parents, 
unlike our grandparents, refused to adequately fund our public colleges 
and universities. Instead, we passed along tuition increases and 
tuition itself to students and their families. We said: It is your 
responsibility, even though we grew up in a system where it was all of 
our responsibility to make sure that public education was well-
supported--public higher education was well-supported in this country.

  So we passed along these increases to students, even though it was 
based on no growth in their real income. They had no choice but to 
finance their college years through the Federal student loan program. 
That was the answer; that was the financing mechanism.
  And with no incentive to lower costs, colleges and universities just 
jacked up the rates. They increased tuition. And Washington bankrolled 
these tuition hikes by financing loans to attend nearly any institution 
regardless of cost, quality, or student outcomes. As a result, the cost 
of college, not surprisingly, has skyrocketed over the last 40 years.
  The fundamental problem we have here is that college costs too much. 
It is too expensive. In 1980, the price to attend a four-year college 
full-time was $10,000 a year, roughly, including tuition, fees, room 
and board. Forty years later, the total price was $28,775 in real 
dollars, a 180-percent increase over that time.
  Today, over 45 million Americans, as a result, are saddled with 
student loan debt--disproportionately, students of color. In my 
townhalls, many Coloradans tell me these loans have made their lives 
miserable. It has devastated their credit score, made it harder to 
purchase homes, start a business, or pay for childcare, or ever move 
out of your parents' basement.
  The same is true for many people in my townhalls who never went to 
college and who struggled to afford housing and healthcare or 
childcare, the building blocks of a middle-class life. I haven't seen 
any reports that President Biden plans to excuse their debt--these 
people on average making $1.2 million less than people that got a 
college degree--their medical debt or the debt that they had to go into 
just to keep a roof over their head in this savage economy.
  But now President Biden is considering whether to forgive $10,000 of 
student loan debt for Americans who earned less than $150,000 last 
year, $300,000 for married families filing jointly. According to the 
Committee for Responsible Federal Budget, this would cost $200 billion. 
There are all kinds of ways you can spend $200 billion. You can extend 
the enhanced Child Tax Credit for 2 years, cut childhood poverty in 
half for 2 years, reduce childhood hunger by a quarter. We did that the 
last 6 months of the year last year. You could give every teacher in 
America a $6,000 raise for a decade for $200 billion. You could begin 
to tackle the climate crisis, which is devastating my State and your 
State, Mr. President.
  But if you are going to spend $200 billion or $230 billion to cancel 
student loan debt, we need to do it in a way that reaches those who 
need it most and reforms the underlying system that got us here in the 
first place; otherwise, there is no reason to do it because there are 
kids that are going to start school next year. Otherwise, we are simply 
passing along this injustice to another generation of college students.
  There is no shortage of ideas where we can start. We should target 
the

[[Page S2781]]

$10,000 of debt relief to low- and middle-income borrowers. By that, I 
mean households earning the State median income or less.
  We should consider additional debt relief for student borrowers who 
received Pell grants while they went to school because that is a proxy 
for their income. We should reform the Public Service Loan Forgiveness 
program, which forgives Federal loans after 10 years of working in 
public service as a teacher, a firefighter, or a servicemember.
  At a minimum, we should expand the program to more borrowers so more 
borrowers can take advantage of it. Beyond that, we should forgive 
their loans after 5 years instead of 10 years. We are losing 50 percent 
of the teachers from the profession in the first 5 years in this 
country. We should strengthen the income-driven repayment program to 
help low- and middle-income borrowers, for example, by cutting redtape 
and simplifying the program so it is simpler for people to access, 
providing relief retroactively for low-income borrowers who qualify for 
that program but never enrolled.
  And, finally, we should increase the maximum Pell grant so low- and 
middle-income borrowers don't need to take on so much debt in the first 
place to get an education. They are having to bear a burden that no 
other generation of Americans have had to bear, and it is not their 
fault.
  Americans deserve more than just student debt relief, an across-the-
board cancellation of college debt does nothing to address the absurd 
cost of college or fix our broken student loan program. It offers 
nothing to Americans who paid off their college debts or those who 
chose a lower-priced college to go to as a way of avoiding going into 
debt or taking on debt. It ignores--really important--it ignores the 
majority of Americans who never went to college, some of whom have 
debts that are just as staggering and just as unfair, to say nothing of 
the 11 million poor children in this country who attend schools that 
are so terrible that they never had a chance at a college degree, much 
less a living wage.
  As a former urban school superintendent, I tell you, I have worked on 
these challenges for years. We have to revolutionize our public 
education to prepare our children for the 21st century. That is a lot 
easier said than done. In too many parts of the country, we are 
actually headed in the wrong direction. Our K-12 schools, as designed, 
will do little to make up for our failed economic policies, especially 
for kids living in poverty. And in the meantime, we need an economic 
vision for this country--for our country--that is more robust than 
making stuff, as I said, as cheaply as possible in China. We need to 
make things again in this country so we can pay Americans a living 
wage. We need to fight for higher wages for people who do things like 
taking care of our kids or our parents--service jobs that can't be 
shipped overseas but deserve to be compensated fairly in this country.

  All of this is going to take time, but we can start now by 
strengthening workforce training programs so high school graduates--so 
high school graduates--have a better chance to earn a living wage in 
today's economy. I don't think we should graduate from high school--
that is what a high school diploma should mean, that you are able to 
earn a living wage, not just a minimum wage in your community.
  We have examples of that now in Colorado where kids are doing 
internships, you know, 2 days a week. They are being paid to do those 
apprenticeships and go to school 3 days a week, and when they graduate, 
there is a job with a living wage waiting for them. A system like that 
would transform the lives of millions of Americans. It would transform 
the American economy and we should support partnerships like that, you 
know, between the private sector and labor that provides students high-
quality paying apprenticeships while they are in high school.
  Senator Rubio and I have suggested we should allow high school 
students to use Pell grants, not only to pursue college, but to pursue 
shorter-term, high-quality credentials that can boost their wages in 
the near term.
  I just met with a collection of people in Denver. It was one of the 
most inspiring things I have seen in a long time. These are people who 
have minimum wage jobs--never lived independently or had roommates--
and, now, because they have gotten just a little bit of credentials in 
over 3 or 4 months of training, they are living independent lives, and 
they can see a future beyond just paying yesterday's bills.
  The bigger question that should animate us on the floor isn't how 
much student debt to cancel but how to create a pathway to economic 
security for every American who graduates from high school, including 
those who don't go get a 4-year degree. It should be how to build an 
economy that when it grows, it grows forever, not just the top 10 
percent; it should be how to give every American child real 
opportunities to contribute to this democracy and to our society. That 
should be the level of our ambition on this floor, and I am prepared to 
work with any of my colleagues to achieve that.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.

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