there are a lot of places to get political information, only at c-span you get it straight from the source. no matter where you are from or where you stand on the issues, c-span is america's network. unfiltered, unbiased, word for word. if it happens here or here or here or anywhere that matters. america is watching on c-span, powered by cable. washington journal continues. joining us this morning is lindsey burke with the heritage foundation. she is here to talk about student loan forgiveness. democrats are pushing for debt relief. where do you stand on this issue? many individuals made a conscious decision not to go to

college to forgive dead. so forgiveness, any amount of forgiveness would foist someone else's debt onto those individuals who made the decision not to attend college. student debt forgiveness would encourage colleges to raise tuition especially if students expect colleges to forgive tuition in the future. most borrowers, their payments are a manageable portion of their income. there are programs currently that where we see large debt balances, with graduate

students. doctors and lawyers, they are likely to be high income earners in the future. it is unfair, regressive and expensive to ask those lower bernie -- earners to pay off others degree especially if they can pay it off in the future. if you have student loans (202) 748-8000 if you have paid them off (202) 748-8001 all others (202) 748-8002. pramila jayapal is on msnbc and talking about why she is pushing to cancel all student debt. >> here is how i think about it, when i ran for congress in 2016,

student debt was at 1.3 trillion. today, student debt is at 1.9 trillion. a lot of this money is money that the federal government makes and that these debt collectors make on interest rates that are higher than we actually need to be charging. if you look at the whole issue, why would we work against ourselves? it is our objective to get as many people as educated as possible and get them into jobs where they could support themselves and their families. this all shows that as much debt as we can cancel, is going to stimulate the economy. if we were to cancel all of the debt that is out there, we would

raise the wealth of black families by 40%. this is a racial justice issue as well. host: lindsey burke respond to her argument on the economy and its impact. guest: it will not stimulate the economy, it will throw fuel on this inflationary fire that we see spreading across the country right now. it is important to remember, to cancel student loans, the debt does not just go away. it is shifted over to the taxpayers to pay off. the federal government of that 1.7 trillion, the federal taxpayer holds the bulk of that debt. if congress or the bidens administration tries to forgive that outstanding balance it

means that the taxpayers pick up that. it is still the case today that two thirds of taxpayers don't hold bachelor's degrees. they are likely to earn less then the event a -- individuals who hold a bachelors degree. it is regressive, there have been studies looking to the regress 70 of forgiveness. the new york fed says that forgiveness benefits up her income earners. the brookings institution found that one third of all student debt is owed by the 20%

wealthiest households. forgiveness is 50,000 per borrower. it would cost 904 billion. it would be orders of magnitude more expensive. if it was 10,000 per dollar -- barware, it would still be 310 billion. host: 92% of that debt is owed to the federal government. 11% of loans were 90 days or more overdue or in default over the pandemic. an average monthly payment was

$300 before the payment moratorium during covid. john in asheville, north carolina. caller: i graduated in 2004 and i just finished paying off my student loans with the help of student loan forgiveness. she mentioned that two thirds of people don't have ashlar's degrees and that is a circular argument. the reason they don't have bachelors degrees is because college is expensive. in terms of the tax burden, it is a matter of priorities. taxpayers are supporting other agendas and initiatives, i think it would be fair for taxpayers

to support each other in getting a higher education. host: what are you doing with the extra money in your wallet now that the loans have been forgiven? caller: i am trying to save it. i have been in public service and i have never made a whole lot of money. and now i have an extra $200 a month to say. guest: speaking of circular arguments, if college is worth it, you should not need student loan forgiveness. the degree would pay for itself. if it is not worth it you should not ask the taxpayer to pick up the tap. b. the federal government has been paying a tremendous amount of money on higher education and as a result it has increased the

price, this is the bennett hypothesis, the more the federal government spends on college the more college will increase tuition and that is what we have seen over time. if we care about driving down the cost of college so more people who want to get education can do so. host: is that the only way to bring down the cost? what are some other proposals? guest: one of the most important ways to limit the amount of subsidies out there.

those subsidies would include subsidized interest. the low interest rate on college loans is that taxpayers subsidize the interest rate. we need to ratchet down the amount of money that washington puts into higher education every year. accreditation reform, decoupling loans from the accreditation system. to enable individuals to pursue college and take individual courses. to craft a higher education experience that will prepare them to enter the workforce without incurring debt. host: do you have student loan debt? tell us your experience. caller: i am one of those who

has a significant amount of student loan debt. i have no problem paying back my debt. what bothers me about this issue is that we as a country, we spend trillions of dollars on things that are less important. we spend on wall street's bad decision-making. but we will not take care of our own people when we needed the most. i don't understand that part of the issue. i am part of the elimination of part of the debt especially for people who cannot afford to pay. guest: i would say we have to be careful for debt elimination.

the debt does not just disappear. when you say elimination, that means that the taxpayer is paying the tab. there are some outstanding questions that have not been answered. if student debt is forgiven now what happens moving forward? students will still be borrowing to attend college and then they will be borrowing with the expectation that their loans will also be forgiven. what does that mean for the borrower? they are going to take out the maximum amount of loans that they can. they will attend the most expensive college they can get into. they will increase the amount of debt thinking it will be forgiven in the future.

a lot of unintended consequences that i don't think the administration has thought through moving forward. host: gary in newport, kentucky. caller: america needs workers. so what about an apprentice program so instead of college they go to work for a company and then they pay back student loans so they can work out something that way instead of the taxpayer? guest: this is an important point. there are many ways to climb the ladder of upward mobility. we put a lot of money into one

particular route which is higher education. by and large, high school college go to a four year break and mortar college to climb that ladder of upward mobility. that mean not be the best path. there are options out there. and apprentice programs hold promise. no other segment in society is getting this type of special treatment more than two years after covid hit. this pauses causing taxpayers money. the department of education estimates that every single month they are losing 2 billion in repayments and 5 million and accrued interest.

the taxpayers are having to pick up the tab four. there are individuals have been making payments while the pauses in effect. that represents hundreds of thousands of borrowers across the country. many individuals have been able to pay off during the pause because the interest was not accruing. they were able to make more significant payments on their principal. we are now hearing that the biden administration wants to pursue student loan forgiveness which means that after working so hard to repay their own loans they will have to assume payments for other people's loans. this policy is unfair, regressive and expensive. apprentice programs, we need to think about accreditation reform

so that we are not subsidizing one particular route which is traditional higher education. we need to think about how more americans who want to pursue other routes of climbing that ladder to upward mobility. host: we are going to jenny in michigan. you paid off your loads. caller: they have been paid off since the early 2000's. i went to school when i was in my mid-30's and i graduated when i was 40. maybe because i was raised by parents who went through the depression. i was always under the belief that if that student loan program had been there for me there was no way i could've gone

through medical school. i continue to live after i graduated like i was still a student and i did not take out any loans that i had to. they wanted to give me money, there were a lot of times that those kids when they get there, they sign on the dotted line and they have all that money to spend. it is for their living expensive. and rather than cutting costs, they don't realize they have to pay that money back. students have access to the same programs that they took advantage of. host: lindsay, take that point. guest: students right now,

borrowing for a medical degree can borrow up to the cost of attendance and that can mean virtually anything. that is one of the reasons that we see students taking out so much and leaving with that. if we look at the median payment, it is a little bit lower. the median payment is 220 amount. for those individuals to graduate after they finish college, that is a manageable portion of their income. she lived frugally to repay loans to attend medical school. she signed contract to repay the

taxpayer and worked hard to do so. student loans would penalize her for having made those payments. it would penalize individuals who decided not to go to college. it would penalize those students who worked during college and decided to buckle down and crack the books. it would punish those individuals who joined the armed services put their lives on the line to benefit from the g.i. bill. first so many sectors of society , it would be unfair. host: in washington dc, what is your student loan situation? caller: i'm calling to say that

i believe we should have free education because we are paying taxes for students to go to school and learn. we should have free education. where is our tax money going? we are supposed to be able to go. that is why we pay taxes. guest: nothing is free. we have taxpayer education k-12. our tax payer system funds public education. it should not be the case that higher education is the only way to move up the ladder.

we should shift away from that mentality, we should consider that when we hear calls for college, the taxpayer support would wipe out student loan debt. if that were to happen, we would hear the talk from progressives for free talk moving forward. if there is student loan forgiveness now there would be student loan forgiveness in the future. in the u.k., they had free

college and moved away from charging tuition but they reinstated tuition after a few years because they only had a few seats available. it is expensive, money is finite and you limit the amount of seats that are available for students. there are a lot of unintended consequences associated with loan forgiveness. host: let's talk about the endowments that colleges have. this is from the new york magazine last year. harvard university announced that its endowment fund grew larger.

the long-running debate is educating a few thousand students that have endowments that rival gdp's many nations. it announced an 11 billion return for the fiscal year of 2021. how is it that they are able to accrue this money and how is it being spent? guest: when we are talking about ivy league institutions that have large alumni networks, a lot of that money is alumni driven. places like harvard are private institutions. students receive, take out and borrow student loans that are

taxpayer subsidized. a portion of that is coming from -- large endowments that are out there, we have to make the case places like harvard with these massive endowments that they are supporting students with lower tuitions it is one more reason we should reconsider this taxpayer investment in higher education and enable universities to increase tuition. to continue every single year to ask the taxpayer for more money. host: they gained 11 billion bringing their total endowment to 63 billion.

it is 33.6 return was outperformed by endowments at other iv schools. m.i.t., michigan and usc. have you paid off your student loans? caller: i want my money back. i paid for 26 years on my daughters. paying off the loan, i think it was $400 a month. i went bankrupt. before my bankruptcy, i took out my 401(k) to pay for school for my daughter and then i find out that the 401(k) is protected, i

should not of taken it out because bankruptcy can't touch that. if you have a student loan, you cannot claim that under bankruptcy you have to keep paying it. i was paying interest in the interest never went down. i finally paid it off in 2016. all i was paying was interest and when i went bankrupt i got on a program and they let me make small payments but the interest went up. host: you said you want your money back. what degree did your daughter get? caller: a psychology degree.

she went to various colleges. if people are thinking about taking out a loan for education, if you run into bankruptcy, you are screwed. guest: if people pay off their loans then all of a sudden they will have to pay off other people's loans. if the bidens administration proposal moves through, not the least of which, those who paid off their loans. host: respond to what he said about the 401(k), dipping into that to pay for his daughter's education. our colleges and universities, do they take into consideration retirement funds?

do they look into that? guest: they look into a wide variety of factors what your estimated abilities to pay for tuition. when it comes to retirement, it is unfortunate to be in a position where higher education, you have to dip into your retirement to pay for education. what is the primary reason there are such high tuition rates. it is the federal government. the federal government is dumping money into institution with little requirements for the institutions to be held versus -- responsible. if we want to get to the root of the problem we have to look at washington and we have to move

away from policy providing unlimited funds to universities throughout the country enabling them to make tuition and then forgiveness on the backend with their graduates are not able to earn enough money to repay the loans. for me, all roads lead back to congress. host: what does the lobbying look back for univers -- look like at congress? guest: they want to continue to increase tuition looking forward so they can make the case for

tax subsidized student loans. i imagine that there are institution are hoping for additional federal handouts. host: alan and wisconsin. welcome to the conversation. caller: this is frankly disgusting, this conversation. this is one of an army of minions who is fighting the government. as her caller mentioned, bankruptcy laws have been taken away from student loans. the heritage foundation should be ashamed of themselves. lindsay, how are the people of texas going to take 140 $1 billion in student loan debt and pay that money back to the federal government?

how are we going to do that? what is not going to do the state of texas? it will wreck the state of texas. guest: individuals who are borrowers. it is a manageable amount of repayment monthly. there are existing repayment plans that half the amount that you have to pay monthly. those monthly payments are manageable for most of those borrowers. host: tom from california. do you still have student loans? caller: no i paid mine off a long time ago. number one when most kids are going to college, they declare a major.

let's say for the sake of argument, he will be a history teacher or in some other professor. the problem is, these students are kicking horses that has nothing to do with their major. this is the 21st-century, we also have to focus on a person. he doesn't need english or some of those other courses but the courses that give him a degree in engineering or those particular kinds of courses. when i was going to school, we had to take classes that had nothing to do with my major. guest: i think you are exactly right, no matter what you want to study, whether it is

engineering, fashion design, you have to attend college for four years. you have to take courses that have nothing to do with the career that you have chosen where you are ultimately studying to do. that is something that benefits the university because the university is able to drag on the amount of time which means more federal loan money and benefits the bottom line of the college. host: how much do americans pay for a college degree compared to other countries? guest: you have to be careful when you think about it and those terms because those countries subsidize those degrees at high levels. many countries are pursuing policies where they do not have the national government paying is such a rate that it is

enabling institution to raise tuition. if you look at the amount of student loan debt that is out there right now it is 29,000 dollars per borrower. this is a manageable amount of debt if you are graduating into a job, a career in your field that enables you to make those payments. i mentioned england earlier, a good example of the unexpected consequences of the government being involved in financing education and there were a host of unintended consequences when you asked the taxpayers to invest at such a high level. you end up with rationing. we have to be careful looking at international systems. it varies country to country. host: the april jobs numbers,

428,000 jobs added in april and the unemployment rate staying at 3.6%. lindsey burke with the center of >> c-span's washington journal, date taking your calls live in the air on the news of the day and discussed policy issues that impact you. saturday morning, the competitive enterprise institute's guest discusses the spread of misinformation in the u.s., focusing on russia and the u.s./mexico border. also, host of democracy and color talks about his podcast and the news of the day. watch live at 7:00 eastern saturday morning on c-span or c-span now.

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