LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Senator Murray on college affordability
March 10, 2016
I recently heard from a Central student named Justin. An immigrant from the Philippines, Justin had a vision to move to America and be the first in his family to earn a degree.
But in the 2008 financial crisis, Justin’s family lost everything, so he’s had to find a way to pay for college. Justin now has $25,000 of student debt, and he’s just halfway to his degree.
The high costs of college is holding too many students, like Justin, back.
Last month, I asked students to tell me what they’re going through. I consider making sure people in Washington have their voices heard in our nation’s capital to be one of my most important jobs as a U.S. Senator. It’s one part of my effort to combat rising college costs and make sure students can graduate without the crushing burden of student debt.
Across the country, the yearly cost of tuition at public, four-year institutions is five and a half times what it was in the early 1980s.
Overall, nearly 42 million Americans hold more than $1.3 trillion in student loan debt. In fact, every second, student debt in our country grows by nearly $3,000.
That’s why I support legislation to help students attend community college, tuition free. I want to make sure more students can take advantage of financial aid, especially need-based aid that helps keep debt down, like Pell Grants.
We should also let borrowers refinance their student debt to today’s lower rates. To pay for these solutions, we should finally close some of the most egregious special interest loopholes that only benefit the biggest corporations and the wealthiest few.
These solutions should be a national priority. When more students are able to further their education, it helps more than just them.
A highly educated workforce helps our economy grow from the middle out, not the top down. Availability of higher education strengthens the workforce that we need in order to compete and lead in the 21st century economy.
For me, this isn’t just another issue. It’s personal.
When I was young, my father was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Within a few short years, he could no longer work, and without warning, my family had fallen on hard times.
Thankfully, my brothers and sisters and I went to college with help from what are now known as Pell Grants. My mom was able to get the skills she needed to get a better paying job through a worker training program at Lake Washington Vocational School.
Even through those hard times, we never lost hope that, with a good education, we would be able to find our footing and earn our way to a stable middle class life.
Today, we can’t turn our backs on the millions of students who need a path forward to afford college and pay back their student debt.
I want to keep hearing from students at Central, and I’ll continue to work hard in the Senate to make sure higher education is a reality for more students in Ellensburg and across Washington state.
Andrew Slater • Apr 14, 2016 at 10:10 pm
Sen. Patty Murray writes, “That’s why I support legislation to help students attend community college, tuition free.”
She is a reason I left the Democratic Party.
A fundamental difference between Left and Right concerns how each assesses public policies. The Right asks, “Does it do good?” The Left is more likely to ask a different question.
When you provide “tuition-free”, all you are doing is subsidizing current voters on the backs of their children and future generations that have no say over the back-breaking debt you are putting on them.
It is immoral.
Sen. Patty Murray’s proposal is immoral.
Plus it is unfair to those who choose to forego college but have to pay for those who do.
Double-immoral.
But this is the Democratic Party.
Take the minimum wage, for example. In 1987 the New York Times editorialized against any minimum wage. The title of the editorial said it all: “The Right Minimum Wage: $0.00”.: There’s a virtual consensus among economists, “ wrote the Times’ editorial board, “that the minimum wage is an idea whose time has passed. Raising the minimum wage by a substantial amount would price working people out of the job market.” Why did the New York Times editorialize against the minimum wage? Because it asked the question, “Does it do good?”
But 27 years later, this New York Times editorial page wrote the very opposite of what it had written in 1987 and called for a major increase in the minimum wage. In that period of time, the Times editors had moved further and further to the left, and was not preoccupied with the question, “Does it do good?” But with the question, “Does it FEEL good?”
And it feels good to raise poor people’s wage.
A second example is affirmative action. Study after study and, more importantly, common sense and facts, has shown the negative effects that race-based affirmative action has had on many black students. Lowering college admission standards for black applicants has insured a number of awful results. Just to cite one: More black students fail to graduate college. Why? Because too many have been admitted to a college that demands more academic rigor than they are prepared for. Rather than attend a school that matches their academic skills, a school where they might thrive, they more often fail at the more demanding school that lowered it’s standards to admit them.
It’s clear that supporters of race-based affirmative action ask, “Does it FEEL good?”, not “Does it DO good?”
A third example is pacifism and other forms of peace activism. Many people on the Left have a soft spot for pacifism, the belief that killing another human being is always wrong. Not all leftists are pacifists, but pacifism almost always emanates from the Left. And just about all Leftists support peace activism, peace studies and whatever else contains the word peace in them.
The Right, on the other hand, just as desirous of peace as the Left (what conservative parent wants their child to die in battle? ) know that pacifism and most “peace activists” increase the chances of war , not peace. Nothing guarantees the triumph of evil like refusing to fight it. Great evil is therefore never defeated by peace activists, but by superior military might. The Allied victory in World War 2 is an obvious example. Violent Islamists today need to be killed before they behead , enslave and torture more innocents.
Supporters of peace activism, peace studies, nuclear disarmament, and American military withdrawal from countries in which it has fought do not ask, “Does it do good?” because it almost never does good. Did the total withdrawal of America from Iraq do any good? Of course not. It led to the rise of the Islamic State with its’ mass murder and torture. Did the American withdrawal from Vietnam do good? No, it led to the violent Communist takeover of South Vietnam. On the other hand, because American troops did not leave South Korea, Japan, and Germany, those countries have become three of the most prosperous and free in the world.
So then, why DO liberals support a higher minimum wage if it doesn’t do good> because it makes them feel good, about themselves. “We liberals, unlike conservatives, care about the poor.” Why do liberals support race-based affirmative action? For the same reason: It makes liberals feel good .. about themselves. They appear to be righting the wrongs of historical racism. And the same holds true for leftwing peace activism. It‘s nice to think of oneself as a peace activist. All this helps to explain why young people are so much more likely to be liberal than conservative: They haven’t lived long enough to really know what DOES good. But they sure know what FEELS good.
As society moves further and further to the Left, so does the preoccupation with feeling good over doing good. The world is getting worse and worse. But many people are feeling better and better about themselves while it does.