virtually the entire illegal population. >> it was on the senate floor that dick durbin of illinois made the case for the potential economic benefits for this. what to play for you what he said. >> let's be clear, a pathway to citizenship as part of our immigration package on the budget reconciliation bill would have a substantial and direct impact on our budget. a pathway to citizenship for dreamers and emigrants with temporary protected status would have a budgetary cost of approximately $42 billion over 10 years according to the cbo. this is a critical component of

our economic recovery. there is no world in which this budgetary impact is merely accidental. $42.4 billion. treating a pathway to citizenship is not just a cost, there are also benefits. it would boost our nations gdp by 1.5 trillion dollars over the next 10 years. it would create 400,000 new jobs and increase every american's annual wage by an estimated $600. when? there is precedent for passing the sledge ration -- legislation through budget reconciliation. publicans have used process to open the wildlife refuge in alaska for drilling and an act a tax cut for the wealthiest americans. in addition in 2005, senate republicans used reconciliation

-- now, they are saying it doesn't belong in reconciliation. in 2005, they put in. this is the exact same immigration status we are proposing to give dreamers. keeping the workers. i have tried for many years to pass a path to citizenship. republicans have obstructed bipartisan immigration reform time and time again. including filibustering the dream act at least five times. >> that was senator durbin. what do you think of that argument? >> the president might say it's malarkey. he made two arguments. one about the senate rules. as far as the economics, there is no question that if an immigrant is legalized, and illegal alien gets amnesty. his income on average does go up

a little bit. tax payments also go up a little bit. the problem is that use of public services balloons even more. that doesn't even count the lardner term effect -- longer-term effect of social security. these estimates that you hear from congressman or very artificially constructed things that are based on 10 year cost and benefits rather than lifetime examination. we published on this and the social security and medicaid, the medicaid costs of legalizing illegal immigrants are enormous. hundreds of billions. maybe there is a good reason to do that. the idea that legalizing illegal immigrants would be some kind of economic home -- boom is ludicrous. it is the kind of thing you would expect from lobbyists and

politicians trying to move an issue forward. it can't be true, because illegal immigrants are disproportionately less skilled and less educated. not moral critique, just the way it is. when they get legal status, they do earn a little more money. therefore, they pay a little more in taxes. once they are legalized, they have access to a wide variety of public benefits. eventually when they retire, social security and medicare. that is not a bad thing. if you're going to have people who are legally in your country, they will obviously be part of all of the social welfare and safety net programs that everyone else has access to. the idea that importing poor people is somehow an economic boom for america is ridiculous.

we set aside a line for undocumented immigrants. you are on the call with our guest, mark krikorian. caller: my mother is a mexican and she works in the hospitality industry, cleaning rooms and so forth, and my understanding is that most illegal immigrants currently are from mexico are of -- or of mexican heritage. when it comes to immigration, we need to look at what is best for the country, and if we keep that in mind, i think we need to keep the mexican immigrants here because they are hard workers, honest. i can see my mother working for very low wages -- a very honest woman, and, you know, it's -- if people like lindsey graham had their way, she would have to go back to mexico.

what about these trainers -- let's look at it another way. what about these traitors? the people that attacked the u.s. government on january 6? do they have a right to be americans just because they were born here? how about sending them back to where their ancestors came from? host: that is mcgill calling. guest: the question is not whether they are good people or bad people. they are not, they are regular people. some are good, some are bad -- most are like the rest of us, a little bit of each. the question is what is the effect of our immigration policy on the broader national interest? the national academies of sciences looked at just the economic, sort of, dollar and cents, side of immigration, not just illegal immigration, but general immigration policy, and their conclusion was there is in fact a small, net benefit, when you add up the cost just in the labor market. the cost and benefits -- there is a relatively small net benefit to the country as a whole.

the problem is that benefit, number one is relatively small. number two, it comes from lowering the wages of people competing with immigrants. in other words, lowering the wages of less skilled people, and then, sort of, transferring that benefit to the rest of society, and that is a moral question. is it right to have a reverse robin hood immigration program, which is what we have now. and the third mitigating factor -- the third reason that small, net benefit from immigration is not what you think it is is that it is entirely wiped out by the extra social service costs that low skilled immigrants impose on tax payers in general, not because they are not working, not because they are ripping anybody off, but if you have a

less skilled, less educated person in modern, postindustrial, knowledge-based economy, the odds are pretty good that he is never going to be able to earn enough money to feed his own children -- not because he doesn't work hard, but because he is a mismatch. if you will, a 19th-century worker in 21st century economy. because he is never going to pay a lot in taxes and will inevitably use services to feed his children and take care of his family, is a net economic loser. the issue is not our immigrants -- are immigrants legal or illegal, good or bad. the fact is that is a mismatch for a modern society to be taking large numbers, especially poor people, from overseas. host: peter from new york. republican line. caller: you stole a little bit of my thunder. the elephant in the room here is

why are the democrats doing this, and even some republicans, allowing all of this flooding into the united states. i read a very good article in the "wall street journal," in july talking about millennials getting married later and not having children, and that in 2020, the population of people dying exceeded the number of people being born. so this is a problem, but it is a twofold situation, because the business community wants cheap labor, and they are flooding the zone. why are the democrats doing this? they see them as potential future democratic voters, because when you bring in uneducated, low-skilled people, they have a tendency to be more dependent on government, and that expands the power of the

democratic power. and also, the business community wants to flood the zone with low-skilled labor so that working-class people, blue-collar people cannot compete with them, and that would keep their wages suppressed. host: that is peter in new york. guest: the way that is often expressed -- the shorthand way is that the corporate right wants cheap workers and the left wants cheap votes. there is some truth to both of those things, no question about it, but i think there is more to it -- a deeper, i wouldn't say ideological, but, kind of, a worldview issue here, and that is that much of our elite, political, business, education, media elite, has become post-national, post-american. and what that means is they don't really see it as legitimate for us to keep anyone out from abroad that wants to

move here. they are not open borders, strictly speaking, because they still believe in borders in the sense of delineating who fills the potholes on which side of the line, like a county line or a state border, but, increasingly, our leadership class -- i don't use elites, but in a technical sense, or business leaders, education, etc., don't really think there is any moral content to a border, that they have any greater responsibility to their fellow american citizens than they do to everyone else in the world. one way to put that is much of the leadership class sees itself as citizens of the world, and how that translates into immigration policy is that if someone from central america, or increasingly from uzbekistan or whatever, comes to our border, we, kind of, have to let them in. we don't have the right. the american people, even through democratic processes, don't have the right to say no. i think that is really what

underlies this, and the issues of votes and cheap labor are true and part of that, but they, kind of, rest on top of that foundation that views this issue through that prism. host: so, we have greg from dallas texting us, asking us to ask you on what the limit is on how many immigrants should be admitted, and how many should be? guest: that is a good question. i, years ago, did a publication where i ask people from all across the spectrum, including frank sharry, who was your previous guest, to give me a compact, maybe 1500 words on what they want. how many immigrants they want, how should we pick them. frank himself did not respond, as well as most people on his side of the debate, and the reason for that is because the immigration expansionists don't have a limit.

their answer, their immigration policy, if you boil it down to one word, "more." that having been said, i don't think picking a magic number is the way to approach this. the way i approach this is inspired by the way the barbara jordan's immigration commission back in the 1990's -- barbara jordan was a civil rights icon who was the head of an immigration commission and released a report, and one of the basic insights was that instead of picking a number from the top, and, sort of, taking -- making immigration policy shoehorn into that, was to go up from the bottom. in other was, decide what categories of people should be let in, and then letting them all in every year, so what that means is how do you define who gets in. just to give you the 30-second response from my perspective, it -- on modern society does not actually need any immigration at

all but that does not mean zero immigration but zero based budgeting for immigration. you start at zero, and then what are the categories of people that i think should be let in anyway? the first ones would be husbands, wives, and little kids of american citizens. everyone agrees that as long as that is legitimate -- and there is obviously a lot of fraud there -- but as long as that is legit you should be able to bring in someone you married from overseas or adopted a baby. that is a lot of people, 300,000 people, 400,000, maybe, depending on any given year. last year will be different. the second group would be einsteins. people that are top in the planet in their field. there are not that many. let's say 25,000. and then for humanitarian immigration, the third part. people who not only are refugees in some u.n. definition, but who literally cannot stay where they

are for one more second and have nowhere else to go under that -- under any circumstances. there is not that many people like that in the world. the u.n. keeps a list of emergency refugee cases. it's like 8000 the year. it is not that many. you put that together and you end up with my magic number, if you will, something like 400,000 the year. it is still a lot of people, more regular legal immigrants than any other country in the world let's in but it is a lot less than the one million plus we admit today. host: when you say the current process to become a legal immigrant should be streamlined? guest: absolutely. that is one of the things. our immigration policy, they say it is the second most complicated body of law after the tax law, and anyone that is filled out even a simple tax form knows that that is ludicrously complex.

a much more streamlined, simple, legal immigration system is clearly desirable, and that means getting rid of a lot of these barnacles that have built up -- all of these guest worker programs, all kinds of legal immigration categories that, frankly, have no justification like the visa lottery -- we give away 50,000 green cards a year pretty much at random to people around the world. so, yes, pruning, streamlining, simplifying the legal immigration system is something we need to do. host: let's hear from louis in virginia calling from our line for undocumented immigrants. good morning. caller: i want to say your guest, mike, he said it in the beginning, he is funded by large corporations. he is not publicly funded. people should understand, should know this person has more

towards republicans, first of all. second of all, i am undocumented. i don't like people who undermine the. i am not from central america to start with, but people who are coming to this country who are in their countries, professors, skilled workers. they might not speak english, but they will learn. they are contributing. another fact that people have to understand and we have to talk with facts. the bad thing about our culture now is anything we here we take -- we hear we take it as a fact. the fact is and i know this because i lived through this, the numbers, when you do a condition get a paycheck, they deduct social security and medical aid. there are a lot of undocumented

people who are working and shouldn't. they don't get the paperwork, guess what happens to that money? nobody talks about that because people don't know. let's stick to the facts. i know it is hard, but everybody has the internet. but please don't undermine people with low skills. they come here, work very hard, become very high skilled people and they are still second-class citizens, all right? we are part of that, and we are the victims. a good economy, a bad economy, we are the victims. so please, let's keep it that way. host: that is louis in virginia. guest: first of all, corporations are completely aligned with the modern left on immigration. it is kind of an audit coalition. in fact, your previous guest, frank sharry, was the leader of a previous organization which

was, in fact, explicitly, an alliance of big business with groups on the left. my think tank, actually, we end up working with, were providing information mostly to republicans who -- because they are the ones who want it, but we have a relatively diverse staff, board, and funders, including the former executive director of the congressional black caucus foundation, the first asian-american candidate for the senate in delaware, the head of the miami urban league -- so, this issue doesn't actually split nicely right and left, as a lot of people imagine. the last people that point he made was about the withholding -- last point he made was about the withholding your paycheck. it is true that many illegal americans work on the books. they don't all sort of work for cash anything by contractors. we estimate 60%, maybe 70% even work on the books, so there is withholding from their paycheck.

the issue, of course, is they are not likely to pay much in income tax because their wages are so low, so they don't have a lot of tax liability, and, in fact, they are likely to get tax credits, refunds, earned income tax credits on behalf of their children, but also, i think what he was talking about was social security and medicare. that is the part that is not part of your tax return. that is not income tax. that is called payroll tax. it is true that if you are an illegal immigrant, you are paying into social security, and if you don't become legalized, you never get social security later when you retire. that is true. like i mentioned earlier, we have done research on this. if you were to legalize illegal immigrants so that they will eventually be eligible for social security -- they don't pay that much in social security, because for low skilled workers, people that

don't make a lot of money, social security is a pretty good deal -- you get back more than you paid in, and the result would be legalizing illegal immigrants working on the books is that their payments would in fact accrue credits for when they retire, but the costs that taxpayers as a whole would have to bear when they retire are enormous -- far larger than the amount of money they would be paying in. again, that is not an argument against it. maybe there is an argument for legalizing people like that, but that's not pretend it would not be enormously costly to taxpayers as a whole. host: we had a viewer on twitter -- what is your view on e-verify for punishing companies that hire illegal workers. there is an argument they will not come if nobody will hire them. guest: it is an important tool. let me clarify -- it is not about punishing companies. it is about the tool to help

legitimate employers -- a free, online system so that when you hire somebody. you have to obviously collect their information for social security and irs anyway -- you put that name, social security number, date of birth, into the e-verify system. i have seen it done. my admin people have done it for many years at my own center, and it tells you -- is that information real, does it match, and as that person authorized to work? the point is not to punish anyone. the is to give employers the point tools to ensure the person they hire is who they say they are -- that they are not lying to them. the punishment part comes in those that don't do it -- that they are knowingly employing that illegal immigrant, because right now you can wink and not and show fake documents, and it is relatively easy to get away with hiring illegal immigrants.

e-verify exists. for a federal government program it is amazingly effective, cost-effective and functional, but it is not mandatory for all hires. about half of new hires were screened through e-verify. when you sign up for it, you have to check all of your workers. about half of filers are screened. illegal immigrants on the other half were not being screened -- who are not being screened. illegal immigrants see that -- they know they will go to the next fast food place down the road. making e-verify part of the hiring process for all new hires is an essential part, as the caller suggested, an essential part of regaining control over immigration, and one point that i bring up, the infrastructure bill passed this week, there was an amendment by senator langford to make e-verify mandatory for anyone getting funds -- road

companies, bridge construction companies that get funds from that infrastructure plan, that they would have to use e-verify, and most senators voted for it, including five democrats, but the other 45 democrats voted no, so they filibustered, basically, and it failed, so the democratic leadership, basically voted to make sure illegal immigrants could get infrastructure jobs from the infrastructure bill, and is, frankly, kind of outrageous. host: from our democrats line, kentucky. this is maureen. caller: good morning. i have a statement about the immigration laws themselves. people like me in small communities are confused when there is such a disparity between immigration laws at the border and laws once these

people are in our country. it is my understanding that you cannot pass through an asylum-granting country to seek asylum in another country. that is my first confusion. the second one is a case out of weed sport, new york, and this -- weedsport, new york, and this is asample case. it happens all over the country . a man named mark was killed in broad daylight by an extremely drunk illegal who had been prosecuted eight times previously for dui, nonregistered, nonlicensed. he killed a father -- a young father, and he could not be extradited because of the laws in new york state. he could not be prosecuted, he could not be held, so he is walking free. this happens over and over, and people in small communities are just confused about what immigration should look like

because of these things that happen and that we hear about. can you comment on -- host: in that case, i am pulling up a story, apparently that same man is now serving time in prison, but go ahead and finish your thought. caller: that is what i mean -- it took so much time, anxiety for this family, there is no retribution. it is just confusing for single americans in small community is to be overrun. host: we will finish it there. guest: two points, the second one first i will talk about. there is no question that there are significant numbers of illegal immigrants that commit crimes not because they are illegal immigrant -- aliens, not because magically you are a violent criminal because you are an illegal alien. it is just because there are a lot of people. some of them are going to be criminals. the question is what does the government, the state, local, and federal government do when an illegal immigrant who is not supposed to be here in the first

place is arrested for some kind of crime. a non-immigration crime, for instance, like drunk driving. in this situation, even if you -- administration, even if you are an illegal immigrant, this administration has ordered dhs not to take you into custody if you are a criminal unless you have committed and especially serious crime, and president biden, when he was still running for office, specifically said that drunk-driving illegal immigrants, convicted of drunk driving, should not be removed from the united states. so, there is any legal immigrant the government did not know about, he snuck in, got summer, -- got somewhere and committed a crime, that is not really on the government. they should have done a better job of preventing illegal immigration but there is no direct responsibility, but when an illegal immigrant is arrested for something, beating up his girlfriend, driving drunk, selling drugs, and the biden

administration knows it is an illegal immigrant because they got the information -- every person is arrested, that information goes to the fbi. if the biden administration consciously says no, we are not going to get that guy -- if you don't prosecute him, we are not going to take him. if you do prosecute him, we are not going to pick him up when the sentence is done, then that illegal immigrant commit another crime, as most criminals do -- they reoffend, that is directly the responsibility of the administration that chose to let that illegal immigrants stay in the united states. host: john, mississippi. independent line. we are running short on time. jump in with your comment or question. caller: i think immigration is a attack on not only black americans, but poor americans .

african-americans built the country, and you allow people -- americans. it is always on the black men. you allow redlining. we just got our rights some 50 years ago, so you have a government assassinating black leaders. host: stick to the topic at hand. why do you believe that is the case as far as immigration is concerned? caller: because of people come to this country they have to be fed and clothed -- they don't go to hollywood. they go to black. they come to our schools, they take our opportunities. we can't continue to take care of the whole world. host: we will leave it there. mr. krikorian, if you wanted to respond to any of that. guest: there is no question that immigration in general, not just new immigration harms first of all the least skilled, the people lowest on the economic ladder. disproportionately black americans, but obviously not only black americans, and

obviously it is their schools that are impacted, and we have seen this repeatedly. we have published something on equal employment opportunity commission cases. these are real cases, not just anecdotes somebody said, where black americans were fired specifically because they were american and replaced with immigrant workers. there was one, and buzzfeed did a story on this and titled "all of you americans are fired." they were black americans replaced the immigrants. immigrants are not bad because of this is bad policy that needs to be fixed because we need to take care of our own people whatever their race or religion. host: cis.org is the website. the center for immigration studies. mark krikorian serves as executive director. mr. krikorian, thank you for your time. guest: thank you. joining us now is adam senior contributor for forbes.

thank you for coming on the program. >> thank you for having. >> can you tell us exactly what you do in that space? >> i have a practice in boston should and i help folks navigate what is very complex student loan system. i help help will dealing with problems with immigration and folks dealing with issues of hardship, unfair practices, that sort of thing. >> i imagine you had to deal with those issues and related issues. what are problems you are seeing when it comes to student debt and agent -- debt management? >> the good news is there are a lot of programs out there to help manage loans that there are some a programs with complex eligibility criteria that it is

unwieldy and services don't always do a great job facilitating so people get tripped up. sometimes they get sent in the wrong direction or have errors or mistakes so it is a major problem. >> information tells us the average that is 32,000 plus dollars, the average payment $393 and the debt load is going up to almost $30,000. we subdivided administration extend federal student loan repayment. can you explain the decision? >> payments on most loans have been suspended since march, interest has been frozen and collection on the bulk of federal loans has been suspended due to the pandemic.

that was originally supposed to and on september 30 but the biden administration was under quite a bit of pressure to extend that because of the ongoing pandemic and because two major loan servicers announced they would be exiting the student loan servicing space in december, which is expected to cause pretty significant disruption but the administration decided having folks resume payments while all of this was going on would not be feasible. >> what is the new deadline? >> new deadline is january 1 and the administration has characterized this extension as the final one. in theory they could extended further but we have to assume that they will be resuming payments in february. >> what do the extension in the first place?

this is a good idea? >> i do. studies have shown that the majority are at the very least nervous about payment and i also think that there is a lot of discussion that student loan servicers are not prepared to handle the sheer volume of borrowers who will be resuming simultaneously and the processing that goes along with. >> what does this mean when it comes to government revenue as part of that? what is to be expected? >> some folks are making payments. i believe nine in 10 borrowers covered by the moratorium are choosing not to make payments. it is costing around $5 billion a month in terms of government revenue. >> our guest is with us to talk about student loans, management and related issues. if you want to ask questions, you are

welcome to do so. if you have student loan debt, call us at (202) 748-8000. if you have paid off that student loan debt, (202) 748-8001. if you have no student loan debt, (202) 748-8002. i am interested in your perspectives on the last two categories -- those who have paid it off and those who do not have it. what is your experience? >> it is not an experience i see -- i am dealing with folks with student loan debt. the folks i encounter who have either paid off their loans or did not have to take them out in the first place are grateful. given the mess we see it comes to our student loan system. next >> there has been a debate on capitol hill about the cancellation of student loan debt. from what you are hearing from washington, what you think about the arguments about the

ability to do that and should it be done? show less text -- and if it should be done? >> this has been a hot topic for quite some time. there are compelling arguments in favor of some sort of student loan cancellation, both economic, as well as more of an issue of racial justice. there are good legal arguments that support the notion that the president can cancel student debt. there is a provision in the higher education act that provides the secretary of education has broad discretion to modify canceling of student loan debt. it has never been done before and there are certainly counterarguments. the u.s. department of education under secretary devos reached the opposite conclusion, there is no legal authority to do that . certainly, there are folks who

paid down their loans who view it as unfair. >> this argument coming from nancy pelosi when asked about the possibility of the administration canceling student loan debt. this was last month at a press conference. >> people think that the president of the united states has the power for debt forgiveness. he does not he can postpone, he can delay, but he does not have that power that would be an act of congress and i don't even like to call it forgiveness because that implies a transgression. it's not, it's just freeing people from those obligations. so the question of who gets forgiven, to use the term that is out there is a debate. we use whatever money there is in support of more people with

even less debt, or fewer people with more debt, that is a policy discussion. the difference between the president -- the president cannot do it, that is not even a discussion. not everyone realizes that. the president can only postpone, delay, but not forgive. host: that is the speaker's perspective. how would you respond? guest: there are plenty of folks in congress who disagree with that, plenty of legal scholars who disagree, as well. we just discussed a couple moments ago how the president has delayed student loan repayment through january 31 of next year, but that involves effectively canceling billions of dollars in interest that would be accruing every month.

elizabeth warren has made arguments there is legal authority to cancel student loan debt. some apartment of education attorneys disagree with speaker pelosi, as well. i believe the speaker subsequently clarified her comments. she was essentially arguing for student loan cancellation to happen, it would have to originate with congress. but she is not against it as a concept broadly, just the mechanism to do it. host: ultimately, if congress or the president went down this route, they would have to decide who qualifies. what are the best qualifiers, in your mind? guest: there are a bunch of different ways to look at this. supporters of debt cancellation believe that everyone should have their debt canceled. there is a logistics argument that that would be the easiest thing to implement. one problem we see is for the student loan programs, whenever strings are attached it makes it difficult to implement and we see a lot of problems as a result. that being said, the president has floated certain criteria,

the type of school you went to -- undergraduate or graduate, public or private -- your level of income has been a major criteria. if it is below a certain amount, you should be entitled to a greater amount of debt forgiveness. there is a number of different ways to think about that. host: the brookings institution making this argument, the taxpayers widespread student loan forgiveness would rank among the largest transfer programs in american history. forgiving all those federal loans would cost $1.6 trillion. forgetting student debt up to $50,000 per borrower would cost about $1 trillion. under each of these proposals, all 43 million borrowers would stand to benefit by different degrees. the federal government absorbing, or at least the taxpayer absorbing these costs, what argument would you make for the taxpayer?

guest: one thing that gets lost in this argument of taxpayer versus student loan borrower is student loan borrowers are also taxpayers. there are around 45 million student loan borrowers in the u.s. and they are all taxpayers. there are benefits that folks argue that student loan cancellation can provide that offset the cost. greater economic flexibility, greater ability for folks who have put off major life decisions like marriage or buying a house. without their student loan debts burdening them, they might have more ability to greatly participate in the economy, which can lift everyone up. host: adam minsky is our guest, he is an attorney dealing with student loans and a senior contributor with forms. sean in california says he has -- with forms -- with forbes.

sean in california says he has student debt, you are up first. caller: good morning. i had a question, but you actually answered a lot of my question. my comment is, i do have student loan debt. i worked while i was going to school. when i finished my masters degree, i had to get a job doing in-home health care making $10.50 per hour. i worked my way up and i still am not working in a master's degree position. i am just hanging in there. there need to be some checks and balances with the companies and employers because sometimes you have to people out there that are playing favoritism. and they would not hire a person with a master's degree that would threaten them to lose their job.

i just heard with nancy pelosi, who said the president could not do anything about student loans. this is something they ran on, helping us with student loans. now, nancy is sitting it is up to congress. lastly, sorry, i am also have saved for many years. i was married for 31 years, i went through a divorce, i want to purchase my own home. i cannot purchase a home when the federal government is putting student loan costs on asset-debt ratio. i live in california, i live in a rural area and i wanted to let you know what some of us are going through.

i worked through the pandemic, i had to pay the federal government taxes through the pandemic. host: thank you for the perspective. guest: it is a common theme that i hear. in the last 10 to 20 years, there has been a greater emphasis on folks getting advanced degrees to advance in the workforce but wages to not necessarily match expectation. the cost of living goes up, you have to go into debt to get that advanced degree to get the promotion, but folks are not really earning the level of income that would be sufficient to pay down their debt, and as a result they feel stuck.

it is a sentiment i hear a lot. host: tampa, florida, this is allen. he paid off student debt. caller: how are you? i paid my debt back. i had about a $40,000 debt after college and paid it entirely back over a period of 20 years part with interest, many more thousand than $40,000. my concern is a matter of equity. if one takes on such a debt, i took it on with the knowledge i would have to pay it back with interest, and i did so. having completed those payments, a matter of a few years ago, and entering the housing market, struggling to find a house, and realizing i do not have the money to afford the house but i -- that i would like to have right now. but i paid my loan. where is the equity in all or nothing? either you are currently

incurring a debt and it is cancel, or you recently incurred a debt and it is cancel, but for those of us who paid for 20 years, it is not canceled. i think there should be a graduated program. if you demonstrate you paid the last 10 years, maybe you would not get the full amount, maybe we would get a portion. it should not be all or nothing. you pay back $60,000, $70,000 over 20 years in the next person who gets alone gets it all paid back or $10,000 of it knocked off, that is not fair. host: that is allen in florida. guest: that is a debate. how do we address this and how do we make it fair? certainly, some folks are saying we should have some sort of criteria attached to loan forgiveness so only the folks who are "most deserving" are the

ones who benefit. people who were defrauded by their schools or people who choose to work in a low income public service career, that type of thing. i heard an idea floated as a way to make student loan cancellation fair, or for people who did pay back their loans, maybe there should be a tax credit for folks who pay down their loans the last 10 years as a way to balance things out. a lot of ideas are out there about how to make this fair. one thing i want to point out is we do not necessarily refuse to implement new programs that benefit people because other people before the program was implement it did the right thing. for instance, folks who were able to save for retirement, that did not stop us from putting into effect the social security program designed to provide retirement income to

people come up that was implemented a long time ago. these are legitimate concerns we have to take seriously. we have to look for ways to make it more fair rather than just not going forward in the first place. host: how are repayment programs usually designed for a student to pay back a loan? guest: that is another great question. for federal student loans, there are a lot of options. a lot of options that exist today did not exist 10, 20, 30 years ago. there are traditional options, you pay it back like a mortgage or carlo. -- car loan. there are income driven repayment plans that allow folks to have a payment tied to their income and circumstances. sometimes, being in one of those plans is a requirement to get on track for a profession based forgiveness program.

while they can provide an affordable payment, there is no requirement payments are high enough to cover interest. there are millions of borrowers paying literally as much as they can and they are fulfilling their obligations under the terms of the contract they signed, but their loan balances are increasing, not decreasing. that is a major problem we are seeing and it can effectively trap people in debt, were even >> we have been waiting for the start of the president's comments on scription drug pricing. that has yet to get underway. in the meantime, we will take you live to the covid-19 response team and their briefing on the pandemic response. >> we are accelerating the efforts to help states response to outbreaks caused by delta. our code response teams have deployed more than 500