irs. and rob willer discusses a study about partisan animosity and antidemocratic attitudes. as always we encourage your calls, texts and tweets. >> i believe my plan is responsible and fair. it focuses advancement on the middle class and families. it held both current and future borrowers. this builds on my effort to make college more affordable in the first place. host: that was president joe biden talking about canceling thousands of dollars of student debt yesterday.

plenty of reactions from across capitol hill and around the country. this morning we want to hear from you. phone lines are split a bit differently. if you currently have student debt that number is (202) 748-8000. if you paid off student debt that number is (202) 748-8001. all others can call (202) 748-8002 and you can also send us a text at (202) 748-8003. if you do please include your name and where you are from. on social media http://twitter.com/cspanwj, and on facebook it is facebook.com/cspan. you can go ahead and start calling in now. go ahead and start calling in as we bring in eric kellerman. how does this plan work and who

qualifies? guest: almost everyone who took out federal student loans is going to qualify. something like 90% of borrowers will see some kind of relief. the plan will work like this, for most people who borrowed recently, the educational department has your information on file and will work to forgive your loans. up to $10,000, if you got a pell grant while you were in college, if you are low income and qualified for that you will get up to $20,000. if you have an outstanding balance of 9999 assuming this policy goes through. there is likely to be court challenges. host: what is a pell grant?

guest: if you are low income, come from a low income family you can get up to $6,500 a year to attend college and that is free money you don't have to get give it back. the government should provide extra loan cancellation to those folks because they have a harder time in general. they have lower college completion rates and tend to exit college with more debt. host: how are people supposed to claim this debt forgiveness and when are we expecting it to kick in? guest: if you went to college recently, the department is saying they have the information of about 8 million people who have outstanding student loans. for the rest of the people if you want to qualify you will have to apply to the department

for some kind of income verification in that process remains to be seen. how that works, it is not clear whether they will have to use, old financial data from college or if they have to go to the irs. you can go to the education department's website. you can sign up to be notified about that process. supposedly, rolled out next month. host: what is the expected cost? guest: i have seen estimates of $250 billion. that is going to vary quite a bit. i think it is very early days and we are not really sure if a bunch of people and up not signing up and not taking advantage of this the cost will be lower. host: what is your expectation here about who benefits the most from this?

guest: there has been a lot of speculation about that but mostly people who are low income. there is a cap on this. if you are earning 100 $25,000 or a family with 200 $50,000 you do not qualify for this program. the education department is estimating that almost all of the borrowers will be earning $75,000 or less. that is middle income. most people will be in this middle income territory. low income borrowers who take out small loans who don't finish their degrees, they are most at risk for defaulting on their student loans. those people will be most helped by this.

at least 20 million borrowers will see their loan balances wiped out completely. those will be low income people who had academic or financial challenges in college. host: you alluded to this earlier, is there a legal challenge coming here? can you challenge an executive action like this? guest: i am sure a lot of folks are going to try. there is a lot of pushback. it is an unprecedented action. the education department has been forgiving loans for profit colleges where students were defrauded. the department has pretty clear authority over those areas. this is different. the department is citing a 2003 law called the heroes act passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. it allows the president and the

government to cause student payments for service members. that is the authority they have used to stop student loan payments. the student loan pause will go until the end of the year. no administration has ever tried this before. there will be questions about it. the real issue as i understand it is whether any person or group will have standing in court to challenge this. that is up in the air. i think it is a political question. if republicans take control of congress in the fall midterms, could they file a lawsuit against the administration? that seems like that would be a strong possibility. host: eric killed her men and

his colleagues that the chronicles of higher education. if you want to follow eric kelderman on twitter. that was the announcement from the president. we mostly want to hear from you. the lines are split a bit differently. if you paid your student loans if you have student loans. we will go to north carolina and he has student loans. how much? caller: i have two masters degrees. i think it is a hundred 25,000. with the interest, i am a widower. i have two kids in college. i have to put both of them

through college. host: what is this do for you? caller: i am waiting to see the paperwork and they say it is going to come out in the weeks to come. i am waiting to see what happens. how i can fill out the paperwork. right now, it's a lot of money. i did get the degrees like you talked about. it can't be taken away from me. i have the obligations to pay them. but i accrued a lot of debt during that time. it is very costly to go to school.

right now, you can go to community college for free. we did not have that option. host: what do you do with their two masters degrees? caller: i am a care consultant. i am a health care consultant. i help health care organizations with constant an operator. host: how long do you think it would take you to pay off that $125,000? caller: that has been the issue. you can't get out and get other loans because of this debt. you can't buy houses, we can't buy cars without looking at that debt. it is a hindrance. i am trying to get the loan forgiveness, being a nurse

practitioner and an rn. i paid that out of my pocket to get the pre-recs to become an rn or apa. pa. host: john from newport, rhode island. caller: when you borrow money you are morally responsible to pay it back. as a responsible borrower you know what your responsibility is. you know how much you have to pay back. i put my daughter through college. i paid for all of her bills. other than her masters which she is paying off. i don't know what the president is thinking here. he is giving away trillions of

dollars, he will give out billions of dollars. last night, i saw on the news. the student loan debt reduction is a big deal. it is not enough. what is enough? there has to be some responsibility on these borrowers. that is all i have to say about it. host: mobile, alabama. caller: good morning. i just can't understand why people signed the contracts and will not pay it back. what is with that? what is with obama? he is the one who caused this. he took us out of the banks. he put it in the government. that is where the big, black hole is. our country is going to hell and no one gives a rats but. host: david from north carolina

on the line for those who have student debt. caller: oh i paid my debt off. i went into the service. i am of veteran. you can go to school if you serve your country. they will pay for it. i did that. i raised my children, i worked a job. i do not think anyone should be allowed to forgive that debt. when i go to the v.a., i make so much money i have to pay a co-pay. i served my country. our so-called president, he is a joke. he is the worst thing i have seen since jimmy carter and i was with jimmy carter. for man to step up there and say that student should be forgiven

alone, i would like to know how many loans were for other people? this should not happen to america. if you take out something and you put your word to it that i am going to do this you should live to your word. joe biden. i'm going to heal our country and make it good. we have more hate and distress going on. we have a government that is split. that will not adhere to what the constitution says. we need to clean house. host: robert out of pennsylvania. you are next. caller: good morning, how are you? i appreciate that gentleman who just spoke. i support veterans, number one

priority. i would just like to ask the questions, who was going to pay for this? host: and who do you think is going to pay for this? caller: i'm not sure that is why i am asking. it's the taxpayer. i am 66 years old. i never went to college. when you make a contract with the car company you pay it or they tow your car. you go to college, you sign a contract. that is the money you have to oh. that gentleman said that he had two masters degrees. i built houses for a living for 30 years and i make hundreds of thousands of dollars without having a college education. if he hasn't been able to pay back that loan, what are those

two masters doing for him? and joe biden is saying it's harder to go to college but that gentleman said you can go to college for free to get an education. it is common sense. just use some common sense. get a job that pays well and you are good at. my wife has a masters and a bachelors in she worked for rolling stone magazine. she made great money. the point i'm trying to make is this, if you're going to go to college, pay your responsibilities. i will leave you with one last comment. i want my money back that the administration is sending to ukraine because i never authorize my money going to a different country to fight a war that we are not in. i would rather give it to the veterans, the police officers

and emts and the people who are homeless. host: we got your point. the news yesterday, the u.s. pledging another $3 billion to combat russia into the future. the announcement coming about that new aid package yesterday from the white house. president haydn saying that we stand with ukrainian people to proclaim the darkness is no match for the liberty that lights the souls of free people everywhere. that was from the washington post yesterday. robert began asking who is going to pay for this new student loan forgiveness plan? this is what the president had to say about who is going to pay. [video clip] there are two deficit reductions that will pay for the program. i will never apologize helping

working americans in the middle class, especially not to the same folks who voted for a 2 trillion dollar tax cut that slowed the economy and wasn't paid for and racked up this enormous deficit. the president never apologized when the government forgave over seven hundred billion dollars in loans to hundreds of thousands of small businesses across america during the pandemic. no complaining when those loans caused inflation. a lot of those businesses needed help, it was the right thing to do. the outrage over helping working people with student loans is simply wrong, dead wrong. host: president biden yesterday

from the white house. we are talking to you this morning and getting a reaction on the plan to forgive thousands of dollars in student loans. this is melania out of maryland. are you there? we will go to dionne and virginia. caller: i have 70,000 in student loan debt. i am happy that i qualified for the 20,000 and forgiveness. that was the main reason i voted for him. i was disappointed when he kept saying that he would not do it. i think the main reason he is doing it because the midterms are coming up and everything that is going on, that is

probably why he is doing that student loan forgiveness. this makes me very happy and i will probably vote for him again. host: $70,000 for what kind of degree and what do you do? caller: my degree is in accounting and i started to get my masters so that is why it increase. now i work for bcu health. host: how long did you think it would take you to pay off that debt? caller: i thought it would take me my whole life. i didn't think i would ever be able to pay it off because even if i get the 20,000 it will still be 50,000 that i still owe. it will take me years. i'm a single mom. about that one color that called

earlier saying that he did not go to college. not everybody can do a skilled job. some of us have to go to school get degrees. not everybody can do jobs where you work with your hands. it is not fair for people to say you should not go to college. not everybody goes down the same path. i don't like that people are like i paid my off. not everybody can pay theirs off early. the cost of living is high, houses are high. we need help. that's all i wanted to say. host: terry on the line for those who paid off student debt out of eugene, oregon. caller: it is nice to talk to you. let me mention some names, carol miller three point one million,

brett guthrie, 4.3 million, vernon buchanan 1.4 million. they are all republicans and they all got ppp loans and they were all forgiven. did we have a segment on that? did c-span do a segment on that? host: we have done plenty of segments on the ppp loans. so you support this forgiveness? caller: i am mostly calling in because i am sick of this set up today. the citizens are being put in battle with each other. i am tired of it.

i am tired of the way this program is run. you constantly are doing the dirty work of the gop. i know you get calls all the time about you haven't got the phone calls, you never switch the number. it is so frustrating because you could have run this so much different with the positive reach out. you don't do that. you never do that. host: how would you have phrased the question, what would you have done? caller: to be truthful, i haven't given that much thought to it. i wouldn't want to come off the cuff. i am not a producer. i am not in the business. although that was what my business was going to be in.

it was the university of oregon. i started college, i am 72 now. i became disabled in the department of education forgave my 33 thousand dollar loan. i was very grateful. i spent the rest of my life being so grateful for that. it would have sunk me under so badly. that is what is going on with president biden. i know there are a lot of caller s, well what about all the people who paid off their loan? what about all of the people, oh i am sorry. host: the business we are in is creating a forum to talk about the public policy issues of the day. in this first hour we are

talking about the announcement yesterday on this student loan forgiveness plan from president biden. here is how it is being framed on the right and left side of the aisle. here are two headlines from breitbart, student loan forgiveness conservative leaders react. that is one of their stories. biden pours student debt gasoline on inflation fire. the other headline, conservatives are trying to pin student debt relief is a bad thing. it is far from perfect, the student relief plan is a big deal. that is a couple of stories depending on where you go for your media. this is earl from florida. caller: i am calling to early

because i am just hearing the conversation and i wanted to wait longer. many times i call c-span and i tell the people that america needs to change their acronym because they called themselves the judeo-christian nation. in the jewish system they gave it to believe that forgave debts. they didn't complain and cry and so forth. then jesus came up with the system that was even better than that when he told us, he gave the parable of someone who started working in the first part of the day and then he hired another person in the middle of the day, and then he hired someone in the last hour of the david he paid them all the same wage. the christians call and complain about that. they need to stop calling

themselves christians and act like the pagans they are. host: from ohio, this is jack. caller: good morning. i paid off my student loans and my loan was for 3% interest. this whole mess is because of the goofiness of the interest rate and the trouble because there. they said no more bankruptcies which allow them to run up the bill. my friend mike borrowed 10,000, his wages have been garnished for 10,000. because of the interest rates, now he owes over 30,000. what biden did ignores when the

loan was taken out and how much has been paid back. if you borrowed something 30 years ago and never had pell grants what good is that $10,000 forgiveness? it is the interest rate problem that it ignores them biden is not addressing that. host: this is kyle from buffalo, new york. caller: that last caller raises a good point that i was going to touch on with the interest. i am paying for my kids college right now. i feel bad for those who paid off their debt. i went into default in 2002. i $30,000 in loans at that time. i was young, i had a young family. they garnish my wages for about four years.

they wanted $900 a month to get myself out of default. three or four years later it went from 30 thousand to 65,000 with fees and penalties. i have no problem paying for what i owed. i don't think these institutions should be making those kinds of profits within three or four years. i think that is one of the reasons why we are getting bailed out. it should be more than $10,000 to be honest. it is a situation where we bailed out banks, people are crying about i didn't do this. there are a lot of people who have student loan debt for the last 20, 30 years. they can't chisel off the dollar amount because of interest and fees or they have financial hardship.

the interest keeps going up. i know it's not fair for those who paid. i am trying to do the right thing by paying my own kids. that is my story. host: thank you for sharing that story. it is 7:30 on the eez coast. we are spending this time getting your reaction from biden's announcement of student loan forgiveness. we mention reaction from across capitol hill. thomas massie from kentucky, saying that biden is upset but they don't yet know that they got the shaft. if you restructured or consolidated your loan, it is possible that a third-party holds the debt and you will not be eligible for forgiveness. jason smith saying the student loan cancellation is another bailout for the wealthy.

washington democrats are the party of wealthy elites. instead of putting a band-aid on the problem we should be give students and their families a clear picture of the true picture of their costs of their education. joni ernst saying that. this joint statement yesterday from the senate majority leader chuck schumer and senator elizabeth warren saying a positive impact will be felt by families across the country and it is the single most effective action the president can take on

his own to help working families. this will improve borrower's economic security, and help them pay down other debt. no other president or congress has done more to relieve student debt to help millions of americans make ends meet. speaking of elizabeth warren, it was c-span who dug into the archives and found this from the 2020 campaign trail interaction between elizabeth warren and somebody had shown up to meet her at one of her events in iowa. [video clip] >> i just have one question, you're going to pay for those who didn't pay any money but those of us who did?

i save my money. i worked a double shift, you're laughing. we did the right thing and we get the shaft. host: that from january 2020. as we cover those events every midterm, every presidential election. c-span.org is where you can go to find our archives with hundreds of thousands of hours of video and you can search. diane and mansfield, ohio. caller: good morning, i appreciated the last few collars. i do have some debt left and i differed it as long as i can and i will wait until the end of the year to see what happens. i want to say a couple of things.

with the interest rate, we need to deal with the cost of college to begin with. those who say not everybody needs a college degree but my position has one. they have to have a way to pay for college. when people are screaming that it is not fair. what is not fair for me is that i am paying for people who have beautiful beaches that get wiped out in hurricanes and i paid to repair and replace those. i can afford those. i think we need to think about a lot of things. just because i went through whatever i want through do i want to put that burden on someone else? i have a degree in social work. we don't pay social workers anything. i made more as a massage therapist than i do it's a social worker. it is the same way with teachers. then they dig out of their own pockets to supply their

classroom. rather than beating each other up. let's look at the people at the top and what they are doing in the games they are p laying. host: greensboro, georgia this is susie. caller: thank you so much. i had two items to bring to your attention about this. i look past this forgiveness to the cause many are focusing on two no cost for colleges. you get free college education. like they do in europe. however, if you look at the program of free college. you will find that there are a lot of stumbling blocks to be able to go to this college.

when you have to make a decision to go to college, the boxes you have to take off to be able to go to college, those are the things no one is talking about. people who are complaining about the banks making money on the interest of those loans. what about the universities and the fact that every time you turn around they are upping the cost again and again. just like with the electric cars. you buy a new electric car, $4000 up on it. there are many different angles that have to be looked at here. no one is correct. what is your priority? which fathers use the most? thank you for your time this morning. host: another angle brought up

by preston cooper. from the research of equal opportunity. a column on the wall street journal. it reads in part, now that biden has opened the debt cancellation floodgates, the republican lawmakers have introduced a house bill to invoke the education departments ability to cancel student loans. they want to revoke that ability. the bill is a good start but could go further. to pop the bubble they should eliminate federal loans to graduate students entirely and return the lending market back to the public sector. that would create an incentive

for colleges to reduce their tuition. if you want to read more from preston cooper in his column and the wall street journal. this is kevin from the line of people who paid off their loans. caller: i think i had about 3500 . i did four years in the navy. maybe they should pay me for that. when i was in school, i worked. i had two jobs. one of them i was full-time to housesit and take care of an elderly lady's house. i have a two year degree in science. eventually, that turned into

about $90,000 a year before i retired. it was a serious thing for me. when i went to school i said what can i get a job in? what would be a good job, something that will be able to pay my bills? my first apartment when i got out of school was a one room efficiency apartment for three years before i paid off my student loan. i bought one new car in my lifetime. another one that was owned by one other person. i lived within my means and i think other people should do that. my spring breaks were working. that is pretty much what i have to say. i worked for what i achieved. nobody gave me anything. host: this is jimbo out of

bakersfield, california. jimbo, are you with us? to stand in odessa, texas. caller: i put my daughter and son through college. my son is all paid off and my daughter is working on that. she is almost done with it. i've been thinking about what that lady said from oregon about your show. yeah you're trying to do something good about this. in today's world, we are so polarized there are people just calling in and saying crazy stuff. i don't know if it can be

corrected or not. i used to hear this program many years ago. it wasn't quite like this. people could call and make comments. now, this world that we are in right now. host: stick around, coming up in just an hour at 8:45, we will be joined by rob willer who is at the polarization and social change lab. they worked on a mega study looking at tens of thousands of people around the country and ways to reduce polarization and ways to bring america back together. we will focus on that for about 45 minutes. that is that 8:45 eastern. caller: yes i will.

i appreciate what you are trying to do. today, it is so polarized. you hear people calling in ridiculous things. that is not helpful for anybody. i am on one side of the team and it's hard to think you will have a conversation with the other side. it is getting bad. it is already bad. i don't know how we get behind that. host: when do you think the last time was we were all on the same team? it wasn't that i was on this team and you are on that team? when did we start going to two different teams? caller: it started in 2000 with the bush/goer. re. it was tilted to one side.

it wasn't nearly as bad as this. this last president we had put things upside down. i am afraid we have already crossed the line and i don't know how we make it back. host: in about an hour we will talk about the study and specifically look at specific efforts to decrease polarization. they explored 25 different ways to do that to see what worked and what did not. that conversation coming up in an hour. this is linda in west jefferson. caller: i just wanted to share my experience with you. this is not the first time they help students get a degree. i went to nursing school which qualified me to become a registered nurse and that was through the cta program. i was paid to go to school.

at some point when i look at how things are going we will have to do that with teachers. there are certain professions that we need. if we have to pay people to do that then we should. that is how i feel about it. host: to greg in plymouth, michigan. paid off student debt. caller: i need to make a comment about this. i might've done a stupid thing. my parents passed i gave my grandkids all the money from my parents inheritance and now it seems like the dumbest thing i have ever done is to give all that away because other people will have it forgiven. it would've been better for my grandkids to borrow the money and have the government pay off that loan then for me to give

away my inheritance. host: harry in norcross, georgia. caller: good morning. i was just going to say, what happened to college tuition? republicans started cutting funding when ronald reagan came in. they cut funding to land-grant colleges requiring states to carry the burden. when i went to college in 1971 it was $240 a semester. i put my daughter through college in the 90's and into the 2000's.

i probably paid $10,000 for her to go to school in north carolina. but now it cost so much to go to college it is ridiculous. when the woman came on and she said, they never helped people go to school before. the g.i. bill sent thousands of people to school after the second world war. my grandfather paid for my mother to go to college. my father's family paid for him to go to college. back when it wasn't so expensive. now, it has been put intentionally out of the reach of people because the republicans don't want people to be educated anymore. they demand too many rights when they have education. ok, thank you guys. host: john and silver spring

maryland. caller: oh hi, that is me. i have not yet paid off my student loans. i think i still owe about $35,000 on them. i am a 51 years old special education teacher. i work with severely impacted kids on the autism spectrum. i have two masters degrees. i pretty much spent 52 years, almost half of my life taking one type of class or another. i get paid all right in d.c.. in addition to the money to pay

off my loans, i also pay money on my students. i am a good democrat. i like what i do. i am a little bit emotional. i really appreciate this. i will take all the help i can get. i do nothing but work hard. god bless america. host: those 35,000 dollars in loans, are any of them pell grant's did you qualify for the 20,000 reduction under this plan? caller: yeah, i did. i probably could've refinanced a few years ago. i guess i never did because i

like to work hard. i pay my debts off. gosh darn, it sure is hard sometimes. host: thank you for the call. just about 10 minutes left in the segment. here the plan as laid out by the president yesterday. it would be a $20,000 reduction for those who have student loans who are pell grant. if your federal loan is not a pell grant, a $10,000 reduction applies to those who make under 125,000 a year or 250,000 per couple. he also announced that pause on student loans. that will end at the end of this

year. that pause began back at the beginning of the pandemic. back in march of 2020. the wall street journal had some questions about the legality of the questions actions. the president did the bidding of the left again. it is important to appreciate that there has never been an executive action of this magnitude in peace time. not mr. obama's immigration amnesty, not the green power plan, not the wall diversion. the editorial board is not the only one raising questions about the legality of this move by the president. as we talked about earlier,

there is expected to be some legal challenges in the weeks and months to come. digging back in the archives, here's another one from july of last year. jeremy ernst took a look at social media and found this house speaker nancy pelosi when she was asked about the president's ability to take executive action to cancel debt. this is what she said last year. [video clip] here's the thing, people think that the president of the united states, people think that the president of the united states has the power for debt forgiveness. he does not. he can postpone, he can delay. he does not have that power. that would have to be an act of congress.

i don't even like to call it forgiveness because that implies a transgression. it is just freeing people from those obligations. the question of who gets forgiven, to use that term that is out there, is a debate whatever money there is for the broadest base, more people with even less debt or fewer people with more debt, that is a policy discussion. the difference between the president -- the president can't do it. that's not even a discussion. not everybody realizes that. the president can only postpone, delaying but not forgive. host: that is from july of last year. speaker nancy pelosi at one of her weekly press conferences when this issue came up last

year. back to your phone calls, david from buford, georgia on the line for those who have student debt. caller: my wife is a schoolteacher. she has student debt. she started with undergraduate debt. then she went into her masters, we paid most of that, and then she has her specialist degree. i think we are missing the point on the psl aspect of this. the teachers, nurses and the people who are out there that have degrees and they went to get their route of loan forgiveness. we have the same emotions as the last guy that called about this. democrat or not, we are always

thinking hey, maybe those student loans may get reassessed. the psl aspect of that, it hits a nerve. it feels like a weak out-of-court settlement behind the judges desk. let's give these guys $10,000 and they will go away. here we are years and years later, we never got the promise of debt forgiveness. if we did get the 10,000, great. other than that, it feels like a week class-action lawsuit settlement that you came away with a lot less and the promise is not delivered. host: what would not have been

weak, what do you think it should have been? caller: if there was a way for us to say, we have $20,000 that is going to pell grant recipients. i can see the other side of the argument. 90% of my friends are conservative. i am always on the others of the argument. the argument they have, people who didn't even graduate and didn't have good grades are getting this forgiveness. we paid 30, $40,000 already. we are not making a hundred 25,000 year. with all the money we put into it. we should have been forgiven 10 years ago. now we are back on the table with 10,000 is all we get? we did not get the forgiveness we were expecting. that 20,000 should have been

considered for the psl forgiveness. we have all been involved in our careers and met requirements. 10,000 for the ones who are actually doing there and of the bargain that the promise that you get forgiven bar none? we know the systematic screw over that the psl recipients were given. the odd reasons why they said no, you don't get forgiveness. apply again in another year. it just seems like a settlement for the psl recipients. forgiveness is not the reason we are doing it. now, it is a future we have. host: vivian, from tennessee.

caller: good morning. our country is the only country that charges people to go to college. they are making money off of the students. the high interest rates, it doesn't make any sense. when you send 3 billion over to ukraine, you can forgive those people's loans. but america doesn't do it, we are backwards. they are making money off of these people and it is a sad day. my son-in-law, he finally paid off his loans. my daughter owes hers. you can take money to give to the people in ukraine, take that money and forgive people's loans. host: we're talking about the cost of this program that is somewhere between a quarter of a trillion in some people have it

at half a trillion to do this, are you ok with that much money to enter 50 of to $500 billion? caller: yes, take that money and pay those people loans. they send money all around the world. why can't you do that for the people here? this country makes money off of innocent people. it is ridiculous. it is time to wake up america. take that money and put it on the people. let them work in their fields. host: john in pennsylvania. good morning. caller: yes, good morning. this is a beautiful trap that i biden has set for the republicans.

he has control of the senate and congress. he could've voted this thing in right now. he said it for december 31. this way, if republicans contested and it goes to the supreme court, it will shoot it down. host: the december 31 date is when the pause that started back in march of 2020, the pause on federal student loan repayments, that is when that pause ends. in the meantime, the white house is moving forward with this plan to forgive $10,000 in student loans and 20,000 for pell recipients. that is something they are talking about in the weeks to months to come. caller: but it is going to go to the supreme court. some stupid republican will contested. what a thing that will be for

the presidential election. look at what the republicans have done to the students. all the young people, all the blacks voting 90%. get the young people behind us. the trump peopletake your money. that you are going to have to pay for your education. a beautiful trap. they say that he is losing it. he is brilliant. a beautiful trap when you think about it. republicans are dammed if they do, dammed if they don't. he has control of congress and the senate and he is putting it to the united states. why not say hey, let's do it right now? host: this first segment of the

washington journal, we are going to return to this question at the end of our program today. up next, we will be talking about the irs with bloomberg senior tax reporter and later, stanford university professor rob willer will join us with a new study on how to reduce partisan animosity and anti-democratic attitudes. stick around, we will be right back. ♪ announcer: live, uc berkeley

stephen hammer will be our guest to talk about leadership, ronald reagan's political career, and the american conservative movement. he is the author of several books including the age of reagan series, and patriotism is not enough, about the scholars who changed the course of conservative politics. joining the conversations with your phone calls, facebook comments, texts and tweets. live on book tv, on c-span 2. >> the media career way from the stanford connecticut advocate to the new york times, then the cbs news, and in his short memoir of his working life, titled four

wars and five presence, he writes "there is a great deal of hammering these days about the news business. young people don't read, don't know anything beyond what they see on their screen and don't see the value of independent knowledge as long as they have google to look it up. the sky, we are told, is falling. announcer: author terrence smith on this episode of book notes plus, available wherever you get your podcast. c-spanshop.org is the collection of product, apparel, books, and accessories. there is something for every c-span fan. shop now or anytime.

washington journal continues. host: our focus on the irs now with a senior reporter with bloomberg tax and with the news that the irs is conducting a major safety and security review at facilities across the country. guest: the irs announced it is going to be conducting a review of security measures in light of some messages that are seen as concerning and president biden's inflation reduction act. the irs is getting an additional $80 billion and that is going to some agencies that have included the agency and employees and that is why it is conducting the security review. host: you are talking just threats at this point, no specific attacks. >> guest: correct. host: the memo that sparked this

conversation we are having this morning, here is part of what he wrote in recent days. an abundance of misinformation and social media posting, some threats directed at irs employees are aware of these concerning messages, and i want to assure you that your safety is and will continue to be our top irc. how many employees are there at the irs? how many facilities are we talking about for what seems like a very broad review? guest: several hundred, and they have between 70 and 85 employees. host: it would be the irs employees union: for this review, even before this announcement, correct? guest: correct. the union conducts this type of review because some of the members are reporting that they are feeling unsafe. one of the things is for the irs to minimize, for the time being,

some of the interactions that irs employees will have face-to-face with taxpayers because employers are concerned about their safety. host: more phone calls, more waiting on the phone? less in person meetings? guest: others michael out into the field or the irs has taxpayer spending, there are thoughts that may be some employees want to minimize the spending in person. host: when with the last time there was a review like this, the last time the irs was so concerned about threats that they did some sort of security upgrade? guest: the last time the irs did a security review was in the wake of the bombing of the federal facility in oklahoma city. host: and what was the result of that? guest: i'm not sure. host: one of the reasons that you cite with the inflation reduction act.

specifically, the irs focus at $80 billion over the next 10 years. what is that going toward? guest: the majority of the money is allocated for enforcement which will focus on increasing enforcement efforts against high income taxpayers and corporations and public partnerships. but some of the money will also go to upgrading the irs technology which is pretty outdated, and also to customer service things like increasing the number of people who can answer the phones. host: how many people are we talking about? this number, 87,000 keeps floating around. guest: the figure that you see is based on the estimate that the department released last year. sometimes you will see republican politicians refer to it as 87,000 agents. 87,000 employees or however many they end up being would not all be agents.

they would be employees across the agency, but also people who would be working on technology assistance, answering the phones, and the treasury department also says the irs is expecting to use other attrition in the coming years, so a lot of the new hires would be just to replace people who are leaving. treasury has also allowed the hires to go beyond just replacing people who are retiring which would be focused on customer service. host: when you say "agents," we generally are talking about armed law enforcement agents, correct? guest: the irs only actually has about 2000 people who work in criminal investigations who carry weapons. so it is a very small percentage of the workforce that does that.

that is not really where this money is focused. host: why does the irs have a criminal investigations unit? what did they do? guest: sometimes there are crimes that are tax crimes, and the irs investigates them. they do stuff working on financing issues, a wide array of things that relate to the tax code. my understanding is that criminal investigation agency has not discharged their weapons at all in the past few years. a whole bunch of irs agents are going to come down on people and that is not the case. host: one example of that talking just referred to from fox news earlier this month, senator chuck grassley, is

interviewing fox news, here is a bit of what he had to say. >> apparently, the irs is going to hire a whole bunch of new people and one of the job postings said this: if you get this job, you've got to be able to carry a firearm and be willing to use deadly force if necessary. the willing and able to participate in arrests, execution of search warrants, and other dangerous assignments. so it sounds like the irs is arming up. >> are they going to have a strike force that goes in with ak 15's already loaded, ready to shoot some small business person in iowa? because i think they are going after middle class and small business people because basically, they think anybody that has passive income is a crook and they aren't paying their fair share, and we are going to go after then, and with

87,000 additional employees, you can imagine what that arrest was going to be to middle-class americans in our small business people. >> what happened between those two seats in georgia, they have to jam it down the american peoples' throats. host: the job posting that was referred to in that interview, explain what that was. guest: i think that was for a position in the criminal investigation division. they mentioned about 2000 people in criminal investigations who can carry weapons, but that occurred independently of this new funding plan. the treasury has directed the irs to come out with a plan in six months detailing how it is going to be using the spending, and we are waiting to see what that looks like and what the details are.

i just want to highlight something that senator grassley said. i think he said something about how the irs would be coming after middle class taxpayers and people who have small businesses. the treasury department has said pretty explicitly we are not going to be increasing audit rates for taxpayers making under $400,000 per year. host: with us this morning as we talk about the irs, this additional money from the irs, the concern that sparred safety and security review that is ongoing. phone lines if you want to join the conversation, republican, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independent, (202) 748-8002. we will start in kingston, new york, line for democrats.

bruce, are you with us? caller: yes, good morning. i want to make a general statement. first, i tried to watch c-span regularly and i agree with the idea that too many trolls are all in talking points that just really interrupt real conversation. i'm going to leave it at that. it is trolling and is talking points in it is interruptive. but the main point i want to make about the irs, grassley in particular is a good example of how a baseline of aggravation, it doesn't matter whether it is the irs or not. it is very clear that they are not defending middle-class or lower-class businesses trying to get started. i was part of that. we were practically put out of business because we got hit with

the estimated income that we never made. and we had to say that for three years. and they took the money. we got some of it back, but the idea that the irs is suddenly going to be attacking small citizens is simply ridiculous. they don't need to defend that. they've been doing that for a long time and frankly, they go after people because they can't defend themselves with finances. this is really about corporate protection and big money. they are worried about finally being invested and the whole idea of downsizing the irs and every other institution in this country wants to be able to not hold these people accountable. this is not just the irs, these are institutions across the board that have been downsized in order to not protect the american public.

host: what do you want them to pick up on? guest: i think that, to go back to this being a portion of the inflation reduction act, democrats included this in the law because they want to have the irs require that wealthy taxpayers and corporations pay the taxes that are already owed. this is not a tax increase, this is about increasing the compliance rate in reducing the tax cap, the difference between the amount paid in the amount owed. that has a lot to do with the motivation the democrats are putting in today. host: talking about downsizing the irs. the history of downsizing at the irs, but should be no? guest: the irs has done a deal

of budget cuts between the and when republicans were in control of congress. definitely has been a talking point that the president talked about, abolishing the irs. it is something you hear republicans talk about a lot. the irs has said because of these budget cuts, the workflow has to shrink as a result of it including for the wealthy. host: maryland, republican, good morning. you are next. caller: a quick question. could you just tell the audience the current audit rate, what is the status quo? why would that change? why would that increase the audit rate for the rich?

we are going to be more able to guess that this is an effort to politically retreat some of that. host: audit rates, something off the top of your head? guest: i'm not sure the audit rates at the top of my head. generally speaking, they are pretty low. the highest for other income taxpayers, overall, i think they are fairly low. host: can you give me enough time to pull up the irs.gov -- this is from the spring of this year, one of the congressional hearings. the audit rate in the tax year

2019 for those with a total positive income of more than $20 million, 8.7%, that is the bottom. those making between $5 million and $10 million, 2%. and then you can see down the line for lower income, for those making between $75,000 and $100,000, .02% audit rate. guest: as i said, fairly low in general for the highest income tax rate. again, the administration has said they are not increasing audit rates on people making under $400,000 per year. host: cincinnati, democrats, good morning. caller: good morning. first of all, i want to look back at the biggest -- you had,

facility in cincinnati. i will tell you what problems we do have. like that boy who attacked the fbi. instead, the irs comes to attack people. host: florida, independent, good morning.

caller: my schedule, they show numbers 4 million, 5 million, $6 million. the actual income is much less. are they talking about what is on the schedule? are they talking about the actual adjusted incomes? guest: i'm not 100% sure of that answer. i think it is more likely to be focused on adjusted gross income, but also there are circumstances may be where somebody is dramatically underreporting the form they actually have in the irs is wanting to go after that. when somebody reports that they made $100,000 that they actually made $1 million, the irs might be interested in auditing that person. host: we are talking with naomi

of bloomberg tax. you can call in at (202) 748-8000 free democrats. (202) 748-8001 for republicans. (202) 748-8002 for dependents -- independents. i wonder if we can shift gears and focus on student loans, the forgiveness plan that was announced. i just wonder, the tax implications, having looked at what they could mean for people who are forgetting $10,000 or $20,000 on their student loans. guest: last year, congress passed a coronavirus relief bill that actually included a provision in it that would allow forgiveness to be tax-exempt. in some states there is the potential for some of this forgiveness to be for state income taxes.

host: that would apply for the $20,000 and the $10,000? when it comes to the state that could use taxable income, this would essentially count as income for the year with forgiveness? guest: every state has their own laws about that in response to this action from the president that some states will make changes to ensure that this money isn't subject to state taxes, either. every state has their own tax system with varying degrees of conforming with the federal tax code. host: back to your phone calls. this is henry in kentucky. line for democrats, good morning. caller: good morning. i'd just like to know how much of the money that i've been

allocated to the irs is going to update the system to keep up with what they are trying to track. guest: a very substantial portion of this money is going to go to upgrading the irs technology, that has been a huge priority for them. one of the things you hear the irs complained that normally is typically the irs would be spending through the appropriations process on a year-by-year basis. you go through a series of short-term bills. in funding the irs on a very short-term basis makes it extremely hard for them to plan, to upgrade their technology. one of the things that is the same amount of funding they can use over the course of the decade is that they can enter into longer-term contracts so their technology is really able

to make some more progress for long-term planning. host: about where are they in recent years? is this funding going to help reduce the issue that the irs taxpayer advocate continually brings out? guest: i'm not sure the exact minutes of the way time at the moment, but the service has been really bad in recent years. with the coronavirus pandemic and all the relief legislation, taxpayers have tons of questions about things like the stimulus checks and tax credits. as a result, the irs has been inundated with questions. they haven't always really been able to keep up with the pace. i know that the irs does want to use some of the funding not only to improve peoples ability to

get a hold of somebody at the irs, but also to expand their online accounts, and the ability for taxpayers to interact with the irs online so that that frees up some of the space on the phone lines. host: what happened to the idea of simplifying tax returns? guest: there was a lot of discussion about that when republicans have to pay the 2017 tax bill and there is a certain version of the tax bill that came out after that. i believe there have been changes made to it subsequently. if i remember correctly, the form just took some things that were previously on and put them on different schedules. it may be unnecessarily including things from before.

host: to john in illinois, independent, good morning. caller: how are you doing, folks. the irs utilizes two thirds of resources on the 98.6% of americans who earn less than $400,000, and that equates to being less than 70% of our revenue. is that correct? guest: i'm not sure those numbers are coming from. caller: those other numbers i figured out while i was looking at the income charts. when i was running for congress back in 2016. so i just wondered if it is still about the same. guest: i'm not familiar with that statistic. one thing i am familiar with is that the irs knows that the

agency is bringing in about 96% of the revenue that comes in for that whole government. host: for congress back in 2016, how did you end up doing? caller: i did ok for a write in candidate. i wanted to run again but this war on chronic pain patients where they have credit arise -- categorized every one of us has been a living hell. i have tried to mention it a couple times, but maybe one day people will pay attention to how many people who have died because they were forced into becoming off labor guinea pigs because of fda approved medication. it has been made to look like it is a dangerous deal by a

psychiatrist organization. but that is a story for another day. host: before we go, i promise we will discuss that again in the future, but what made you want to run for congress and the first place? caller: back in 2016? host: yeah, why would you want to be a member of congress? caller: my numbers are correct, i have a degree in mathematics. we are actually wasting the internal revenue service on the 98.6% of americans who earn less than $400,000. 98.3% of congress is $174,000. some my idea for a nation which is relatively easy, we have

humans paying 1%, 2%, things we need to survive. transaction tax where people buy stocks and corporate bonds, all that kind of stuff. if you look at those numbers, we generate five times the revenue. and then we can do whatever kind of social programs we want. look what they are giving away to them. everybody can get everything they wanted. does rich people will make more than the president of united states, the world's most powerful job. they deserve to be paid for the worldwide police protection that we call the united states military. guest: i will say if you bought the idea of a stock that fails,

that is something that a number of progressive democrats have proposed in the past. that is an idea that democrats have thought about as a way to tax the rich. host: eli in connecticut, republican, good morning. caller: good morning. with all these irs agents they are aiming to hire, are they going to go after all these fake and frivolous nonprofit organizations? i believe that 90% of nonprofit organizations are a front or they are just fake nonprofit organizations to make a ton of money. presidents and vice president of the nonprofit organization make millions of dollars.

the president and vice president should not be making more than $100,000. they should not be a nonprofit organization. guests want to go and look for all these frivolous -- frivolous friends. making millions and millions of dollars. guest: the funding that the irs is getting is part of the act focused specifically on enforcement in that area, so the irs does have a division that is focused on the nonprofit world. host: the 87,000 number, i just want to come back to that.

that is not 87,000 agents, and probably not 87,000 total. a year ago, it refers to a total number of employees over 10 years. it doesn't just refer to people working on technology and customer service. the irs has people retiring in the coming years host: and long-time columnist of the washington post, is: today, this issue specifically about 87,000 agents claiming less than 1% for agents.

republican members of congress treated the 87,000 agents falsehood hundreds of times while fox news has repeated it more than 90 times just this month. all, he says, unmoved by the fact-check repeatedly debunked that nonsense. democrat, good morning. caller: first, i would like to thank c-span because you have given me information like no other and i would also like to thank you for getting money out for the pandemic, it has really helped a whole lot. i have a loan of probably about $50,000. i was told i was unable to stay

on the job, and today, it is over 30 years. to have student loan debt is almost impossible for me and my family. i want to thank president biden, because it is going to help my family get back. i found my computer-literate self, it is really helping me a whole lot. anybody who is going to say that this loan is not fair, it is for those who are struggling with the worst of it. host: the student loan forgiveness about president biden's announcement yesterday, in the last 30 minutes of this program, we will return to that subject.

guest:guest: there was a provision that was passed last year that exempt forgiveness for the next few years. host: a few more calls here, this is nelson in pembroke pines, florida, independent, good morning. caller: good morning. first of all, i just want to say, miss pagoda -- host: jegoda. caller: pardon me. if you really believe that the irs is not going to audit those that make less than $400,000, then you believe in the tooth fairy. the whole purpose of adding so many irs agents is to increase the amount of money going into the government, and that would

mean having to go after those that make less than $400,000. the rich that people are constantly attacking already pay most of the taxes in this government. the majority of people who are under the 50% threshold, there are no taxes at all. as far as the middle class that they are going to be going after, i believe this is another step toward tyranny. i hate to use that term, i don't use it lightly, but this is just another way for the government to try to squeeze more out of people who work, and more out of people who are law-abiding and pay their taxes. it is unfortunate that this is taking place.

more money should have been sent to the border patrol rather than to the internal revenue service. thank you. guest: i don't know exactly what is going to happen, the treasury and the irs are pretty adamant that they are not planning on increasing audit rates for taxpayers making under $400,000 per year. the irs is supposed to command with a plan because of how it is going to use these funds in about six months, and we will have a little bit more information than about how they see themselves spending money and how they are going to allocate people, where they are going to hire people. i would say that in terms of hiring, sometimes the audits for businesses and for high income taxpayers can be very complicated. these wealthy companies have

very sophisticated lawyers who will use very sophisticated strategies and spend a lot of resources to defend their positions. the irs has said in the past that it has been outgunned when it does audits in this area. i think some of this money is designed to help the irs kind of be able to devote more resources to these audits that are complicated when you have a high pricing -- on the others. host: how long is it expected to take for the irs to absorb $8 billion in additional new spending each year? does it have the ability to bring that many people online? guest: i think it is something that is going to ramp up over time. i don't think you're going to see a huge increase right away. it is something that will happen over time and also when somebody is hired in a condition where

they are doing audits of some of these high income taxpayers work obligated corporations, they can take a considerable amount of time to train those. it will be a while before there is a real difference. host: chicago, republican, you are next. caller: good morning, how are you? i guess my question is we have 87,000 agents on board with the irs. we have to put those agents in and border patrol, there's only so me qualified individuals. today have an outlier -- outline of what they actually hope to hire as far as the 87,000? guest: the hiring the irs is

going to be doing is not just enforcement. it is also going to be hiring people who are i.t. professionals who can really work to upgrade the irs technology systems. it is also going to be hiring people maybe who will help answer the phones, hiring people who can help improve the irs website so that people can interact with the irs well online. it is not just going to be tens of thousands of people doing audits and certainly, it is not going to be tens of thousands of people on the criminal side. host: fairfax virginia, lifer republicans, good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for doing this segment.

i just want to clear up one thing. their rates of audits by income level will not increase, that doesn't mean that the number of audits won't increase. the number of audits will increase, and all the income brackets, i would assume, will increase. there will be more audits. and i just want to point out that it is not an easy process, and is not just the current year. they can go back years. it is very stressful, and it can be expensive. this is not just something that doesn't bother somebody unless they are making $400,000 per year. there will be more audits, they

are not done, and they can be expensive. host: do you have experience with an audit? can you talk about that? caller: i have never been personally audited, but i am a cpa. host: walk us through that process. caller: well, it depends on what they are auditing. a lot of times they just send a letter saying we disagree with that amount of money. you have to have all your records. and i just want to make a note that i am a cpa. a lot of them, they are not cpas. they know some obscure little fact with tens of thousands of pages of tax code, and a could be very complicated, especially for a small business.

really hard for a small business. and they could go back years. it is not an easy process, a lot of times. they seem to think if you make less than 400,000, you don't have to worry. we do need enforcement, though. we have to have some level of enforcement, or people won't pay their taxes. there is a balance here. i don't know if you remember, i think it was maybe in the 90's were just at the turn-of-the-century, there was a lot surrounding the irs and how threatening he could be. it is very stressful, a very stressful process. host: naomi, we will give you the final minute or two. guest: i don't think anybody is

saying that being audited is a pleasant experience. the administration says that they are focusing their audits on the wealthy. i think no one is saying an audit is a good experience. certainly, the cpas wyatt seemed talking about this a lot. host: bloomberg.com is where you can go to see her work. you can follow them on twitter, easy enough to find. naomi is a senior reporter. thanks so much for your time. up next, rob will join us discussing new studies on how to reduce partisan animosity and anti-democratic attitudes. we will be right back.

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time -- and a little less time being president. >> find presidential recordings season two on the mobile app or wherever you get your podcast. announcer: washington journal continues. host: we return now to the topic of political polarization in america. our guest has spent a long time studying the issue at stanford university. up early for us, thanks so much for being here. before we get to the study you conducted on methods to reduce polarization, just put the situation in perspective for us. how divided would you say this country is right now? more divided than it has ever been since the civil war? caller: i would say that the u.s. is as divided as it has been at any point since the civil war. as a political researcher and a

sociologist, i tend to focus on the public opinion, which is one way to look at this. public opinion data on polarization and attitudes in the american general public is really concerning. it is not looking very good. for example, we see concerning levels of support for condoning violence. those levels are not high, but i would still describe them as concerning because you want to see that near zero or so. anti-semitic attitudes are pretty high as well. americans report being willing to tolerate antidemocratic moods from political leaders in their own party for partisan gains. and then finally, we seem steadily increasing partisan animosity between rival parties in the u.s. for four or five decades now.

so we have a half-century trend of increasing animosity between democrats and republicans. that is just the general public. elected representatives are more ideologically distant than they have been in a century, but we study the public the most and look at the trends. host: when you say antidemocratic attitudes, you are talking democratic with a small d, right? guest: exactly right. the way we and other political researchers have often studied it. how likely would you be to vote for a candidate from your party if that candidate reduced polling places in districts that disadvantaged them or prosecuted journalists for doing negative coverage of them and their party, or refused to acknowledge the results of an election? these are the things that we think of as antidemocratic moves that politicians might do, and

we are interested in how the general public feel about that. a critical check on democratic fact-finding is the risk of not being elected. if people are willing to go see you all you are doing undemocratic things, politicians for the most part will not do undemocratic things. but as long as you do have free and fair elections, it is important to hold politicians accountable and check democratic fact-finding. host: why is division so bad right now? what is different about today? guest: there is so much going on with a friend that is this big and has gone on for this long. i think the thing that really triggered the trend in emotional polarization, increasing dislike between democrats and republicans, i think the first thing that happened was that congress or politicians in

general, the political elite, polarized first in terms of how distinct they were in their attitudes and policy views. if you go back to the 50's, the 60's, even the 70's, you see kind of -- overlap in the distribution in the middle with some liberal republicans or moderate republicans who are scoring more liberal than the most conservative democrats, and now we see a total halloween out of the middle. and there is no overlap in the u.s. congress, democrats and republicans. politicians and party platforms, they have never been more different. they are totally distinct. when that is the case, the general public can sort more cleanly into being democrat or republican. it used to be there were people with a bunch of liberal views who voted republican at a time and vice versa, conservative

folks voting democrat. but now that would be very strange to do. you have to make clear which team you should be assigned to. and has led to a bunch of other trends, including demographics being more associated with party, race and ethnicity highly associated with party. gender highly associated with party. whether you live in a rural or urban area is more associated with party than it has ever been. it has kind of turbocharged that party identity, and those animosities that rural people have for urban people, now feels partisan animosity. a very long answer to your question, but we now have a situation with distinct party identities that are really different, people don't see i to i and they increasingly dislike one another.

host: your study tested solutions to reduce partisan polarization. what solutions did you test and what you find? guest: what we did to try to address this problem of increasing polarization and anti-democratic attitudes in the general public was to conduct will be called a mega study, which was an effort to gather a lot of ideas for what could reduce these views. we tested 25 ideas in a massive experiment with 32,000 american democrats and republicans, a representative sample of american partisan. the way that we got the ideas that we tested was pretty innovative. we decided it was a big problem, we've got a couple ideas for have to try to improve democratic attitudes and partisan animosity. but of course, we don't have all the good ideas, not even close.

so we sent out a call on social media to academics, practitioners and nonprofits, activists, working in advocacy groups and social movements. send in your best ideas and we will test them against one another to see what i the best ideas for improving these attitudes in the american mass public. and people sent in all sorts of stuff. it had to be something we could embed in an online survey experience. that is how probably most of the polling data that you see these days is generated, that is also how we do political experience like this. it had to be something you can experience in an online survey. so we got video, audio, chat box, all kinds of stuff. we got 250 submissions from 400

researchers, 17 other countries. their response was really incredible. much bigger than we had hoped for. we found 25 ideas and tested them. some of the results were really interesting. one of the results, one overarching strategy that was effective in a few of the most effective interventions that really stuck out, it would probably be correcting inaccurate or exaggerated stereotypes of the views of rival partisans. so this strategy and the interventions that reflected the strategy kind of leverage something that is pretty well-known, which is that american democrats and republicans have some radical misperceptions of the other side's levels of toxic polarization and anti-democratic attitudes. we are concerned about that for

sure, but democrats and republicans both even overestimate the concerning levels that we observe. in one study we found that american democrats and republicans overestimate the levels of support for political violence on the other side, something like 300%-400%. a radical overestimate. and if you correct that, you tell them actually, republicans in general report this level of support for political violence, the people you are correcting will themselves lower their own support for political violence. this suggests that a lot of what we're seeing here is people mirroring the attitudes that they believe the other side has. they say i don't want to bring a knife to a gunfight here. if these folks urban to sacrifice, i need to as well. these people are willing to support civil violence, i will as well. but it turns out we have these

gross misrepresentations of the other side and correcting that can bring down the partisan conflict we're seeing in the general public. host: a concrete example of a solution that needs tested, simply play a video from the candidate for the utah governor back in 2020. and to test the attitudes before and after that video. here is that campaign advertisement. >> i am your republican candidate for utah governor. and i'm chris peterson. >> we are currently in the final days of campaigning against each other. but our common values transcend our political differences and the strength of our nation rest on our ability to see that. we are both equally dedicated to the american values of democracy, liberty and justice for all people. we just have different opinions on how to achieve those ideals. but today, we are setting aside those differences to deliver a message that is critical for the

health of our nation. so whether you vote by mail or in person, we will fully support the result of the upcoming election regardless of outcome. although we sit on different sides of the aisle, we are both committed to american's ability and a peaceful transition of power. and we hope utah will be an example to the nation because that is what our country is built on. please, stand with us on behalf of our great state and nation. we approve this message. host: again, that campaign advertisement from 2020. guest: this was one of the more effective interventions that we tested. when people saw this video, even though it is about a gubernatorial race that was over a year and a half before they saw it and went public in a stately were not living in for a vast majority of the participants, maybe they had never even heard of these guys, nonetheless, people reported less anger and animosity toward the rival partisans, whether

they were democrat or republican, and also greater support for democratic principles. less willingness to sacrifice democratic principles for partisan gain. in other words, willing to vote against an in-party candidate who broke democratic rules. and what is with the cool about this is it is totally scalable. you can imagine a larger movement, perhaps funded by campaign donors from both sides of the aisle, which is candidates in elections like our presidential election to film ads like this and putting them on tv. you can imagine social media platforms like meta or facebook to promote these by contributing bipartisan or even nonpartisan ad spots, or by commissioning the content in the first place

directly on their site. this is the kind of thing that helps to stabilize our democracy by reminding people there are common democratic rules that both sides should be agreeing to, and at some level in an election you are not just competing, you'll also plot operating. -- you are also cooperating. you are cooperating on basic rules, that elections are binding in legitimate unless evidence shows otherwise. having that service turns out to be important. host: plenty of calls. rob willer with us until the bottom of the hour. this is josh out of illinois. you are up first. caller: good morning. can you hear me ok? good morning. i can tell you exactly why there is such divide in the country.

it startled with -- it started with donald trump every day saying the media was fake news at the media is the enemy of the state and all of the other things he would say. all of his constituents believe everything they read or anything anybody says is a lie and he tells the truth, which is basically the opposite. and then on top of it the main thing is fox news. when you hear the republicans call in, they are all angry. you can tell they watch fox news because we have tucker carlsen, sean hannity, jesse waters, they come home from work and see these people yelling on the screen save the democrats are trying to destroy our country and promoting a bunch of lies.

that is all i have to say. i did not really have a question . host: we will take them up. rob willer on former president trump and the media environment right now? guest: thanks, josh. i agree that donald trump is in terms of influence and in terms of his behavior as the leading undemocratic politician in the u.s. today. it is interesting to think of donald trump as both cause and effect. there is no question donald trump has stoked unfounded skepticism about the 2020 election and that has been damaging to american elections, americans faith in elections which is lower than it has ever been, and a lot of that is misinformation that donald trump has propagated.

it is also worthwhile to think of donald trump as an effect. there were forces of polarization that made it possible for donald trump to win the presidency. for a lot of republicans in 2016 because of the high levels of polarization, they did not view voting for a democrat or staying home and indirectly helping the democrat win the presidency as an option. in interviews on donald trump voters from 2016 show a lot of people did not like the way he tweeted or did not like a lot of his behavior and personal life or how domineering he could be personally, but they could say i cannot vote for hillary clinton because her views are in a completely different place from my own. or i hate her or i hate the democrats. polarization can play a real role in driving the election of

undemocratic leaders as partisans hold their noses and say there is stuff about this candidate i do not like but i will still vote for him or her because i do not have a choice. it does not make any sense for me to defect to the other party. i might agree with josh, a lot of that is the product of a skewed information environment, but it is also the reality of the situation and that polarization is partly how we got donald trump as a political leader. host: kevin on twitter wants you to talk about joe biden, saying address these remarks of joe biden in which he said "the maga crowd is the most extreme political organization that has existed in american history." guest: a really good question. joe biden started off his presidency trying to represent everybody using a lot of anti-polarization rhetoric, rhetoric around unity, and we

notice he has tried to more recently label a faction within the republican party as the maga faction, that is a terminology that has been going around over the last few months. it reflects a specific political strategy to try to marginalize a purportedly anti-democratic faction within the party. host: we encourage coffee on the washington journal. go ahead. guest: thanks for your support. it is a bit of a strategic move. we still want to be welcoming to moderate republicans who might want to vote democrat or still have faith in elections or do not support the capitol riot as a legitimate act of protest and so on, trying to keep them in the tent politically and marginalize what they are calling the maga faction that

has the increasing skepticism around elections or seems to be getting more extreme and radicalized as the months tick by. it is a political strategy and it is definitely different than the initial rhetoric of the biden presidency. host: to chicago, this is carl, a democrat. good morning. caller: good morning. i want to pose a question. when you do your surveys is it possible you can interview republicans and ask them if they support getting money from the stimulus.

did they give money back in 2008 when obama was in. they always complain, but they take money. then they say the democrats are horrible when the democratic party tries to look out for all of the people, whether republicans, or they look out for people in their district. host: i will let you take that up. guest: in our research we did study people's political attitudes to see if the sorts of interventions we were testing change them at all, and interestingly for the most part these interventions which were targeting people's democratic principles and animosity towards political rivals, it did not

change people's actual attitudes on issues. there is one exception i found interesting. an intervention that tried to increase people's concerns about the threat of democratic collapse, this was maybe the second most effective intervention we tested for improving americans democratic attitudes, and what it did was it showed video footage of scenes of societal unrest and rioting and police repression in the streets of countries that had just been enduring democratic collapse. it true a connection to the u.s. saying that could happen here, and used imagery from the capitol riot's in january 2021. what we found is this intervention tended to increase democrats and republican commitments to democratic principles and decrease their

animosity towards rivals. it also increased how it made participants in the studies attitudes in general more liberal, including on economic issues like the size and generosity of welfare programs. this is very interesting because it suggests when you attach more stakes to the threat of democratic collapse and the risks associated with democratic backsliding that democrats and many republicans turned towards the left, they turned towards democratic principles but also away from the republican party and a little bit more towards liberal positions on a number of political issues. host: the line for republicans. keith in florida. good morning. caller: good morning. i have been calling and talking since brian lamb and steve were the only two hosts on your show.

my 60th birthday was january 6. i am beginning to not like my birthday anymore. i've heard more in my life in the last year and half that i ever in my whole life. the government and the media come in my opinion, is the cause of this what i've have seen in my lifetime. the government have been buying votes on both sides, making promises they cannot keep. they cannot keep the promises of medicare, social security, veterans come already. they are going bankrupt and we are starting new programs. it divided the public into little groups. i label myself as an american that happens to believe in god and his son and i am not hyphenated because i am adopted and i do not know so i can pick on everybody. i do not know what is in my dna.

i think we are running our country into the ground dividing ourselves. i am a maga, i went to november 14 when we had a chance to do something legally. i knew from bush gore that the supreme court said after december 12 there was no legal means to change the vote. from the 14th the electors and sue providers -- and supervisors -- from december 14 it was ceremonial. what they did was wrong. i think the fbi had their hand into the organizations, the oath keepers and the proud boys. i hung around by harry's pub. i've been marching there since the tea party. the country is divided so much

by the government. both sides are not fact-based reporting. there are emotional media for cooked bacon getting people mad. that is all i have to say. host: you have been watching us a long time. what solution would you propose? caller: i would go back to the beginning where you did not label republicans or democrats or anything, it was open lines. host: keith in florida. guest: thanks, keith. he brings up a lot of interesting threads that one can pull on. when he brings up is this idea the media is stoking partisan division, which i think there is good research and good common sense to support this idea. with the decline of the three networks as the primary outlets for news and the emergence of

partisan media sources that play a much bigger role in people's information consumption and also the rise of social media platforms that people can purposely or inadvertently curates their own information environment, we find more that americans can select into or find themselves in different information environments where they are hearing information that is consistent with their ideology and confirms their preconceptions and they can probably stop watching some news that is partisan or ideologically extreme. it is a big problem that helps to create the situation where we cannot agree on basic facts. one of the interventions that was submitted to the challenge by a team headed by christopher

bryant. they try to leverage this as a unifying force. they can understand that part of the partisan animosity and rank or you feel is a product of media stoking those animosities, and it had excerpts from a book by matt taibi who talked about how editors would say explicitly the partisan anchor stoking content is good and people click on it. this does really well. they would produce more of it because it got clicks. you could see it is not just the emergence of partisans in ideological media outlets that is popular, it is also that those outlets have become more ideological and clearly plays a role.

telling democrats and republicans there is a role in the media and there benefited from stoking your anger at your political rivals in the u.s., this increased dashboard decreased animosity towards rival partisans and people were thinking i should not play into this dynamic that is bigger than me, i should try to defect from this dynamic and not be so angry at my rivals. it also had a small effect on improving people's willingness to support undemocratic candidates. people reflected i need to not play into this dynamic and continue to vote for candidates for my party no matter what they do. that would be a part of this polarization that is being partly driven by media pursuing profits. whether this intervention is exactly the way we would understand this dynamic as analysts, it was effective for

improving polarized attitudes among americans. host: about 15 minutes left with stanford university professor rob willer, the director of the polarization and social change lab at stanford university. if you would like to take a deeper look at this study, you can find it online, strengtheningdemocracychallenge. org is where you can go. you can also call in as michael did out of redding, california. caller: thanks for taking my call. my biggest comment is something that has been bothering me all this year. that is that the media continues to portray democracy as a failing system. i do not believe that is true. democracy works all over the world. our democracy is not failing.

democrats and republicans can no longer play nice together. they cannot work together. the democrats and republicans, the two party system is failing us. the media is responsible for that. we ignore the warning signs in the 1980's when they consolidated media conglomerates and now i listen to the overall narrative and it is the media that is beating this drum. that concerns me. what is the hidden agenda behind this message our government is sending? are they like you like to call the deep state? are there entities -- obviously trump -- to destroy our democracy and remake our government? host: -- guest: this is a really

interesting line of reasoning that i agree with to a great extent. one aspect of this icy is there is a potential self-fulfilling prophecy dynamic where we talk so much about partisan conflict and polarization and democratic backsliding and flagging commitments to democracy and high support for political violence, we talk about that so much, we create a lot of it because it is in intergroup conflict dynamic, and if you think that the other side, you think the other side is trying to attack you you do not want to bring a knife to a gunfight so you have to up your own commitment to the conflict. you have to up your own animosities, you hearing information about conflict and hate and a flagging commitment to democracy. what choice do you have but to also tolerate antidemocratic

moves among politicians and overlook or not criticize bad arguments on your side you disagree with. you cannot afford to do that because it is your team with the other team that can lead to a radicalization of each side, and escalation of rhetoric and escalation of intergroup animosities that can get dangerous. the whole dynamic that was being exaggerated in the first place because it sold clicks or it sold newspapers or its old tv spots, that dynamic and become very real or at least more real. that was the one of the central insights from the experiment we did was that these interventions that try to pop that bubble and say you are really overestimating how much the voters on the others support these undemocratic moves and support democratic backsliding on their side. that is not that popular.

you're overestimating that two fold or the case of violence three or four fold. getting that information was helpful for ratcheting things down. the absence of that corrective information people are going to likely go up and up and up in their partisan animosities and their willingness to verse eight democratic principles. all of this starts with a narrative that worries people, gets them to consume more news, but can make itself real. this is one of the dynamics i get concerned about with polarization of democracy. as someone who runs a lab committed to us being polarization -- committed to studying polarization, i worry about contribute into that dynamic by shining a light on the problems. he did not want to do it in a weight you are exaggerating these perceptions or making people not see them clearly because of the self fulfilling prophecy risk, which is quite real.

guest: -- host: a tweet from a couple minutes ago. as republican national committee at the democratic national committee push their platforms to the edges it creates more space for a independent candidate to come in. let's break the two system. is that possible? guest: i agree is one of the most attractive solutions to create an option in the middle to create counter pressure. i do not know that i would necessarily be voting for that party but i would like its effects on the political landscape and i imagine a lot of people would i each side. a great difficulty with winner take all election structures that are not proportional like parliamentary systems, there is a real disadvantage to third parties. it is very difficult for third parties or individual candidates

to gain a competitive foothold in the system. they start from so far behind it is incredibly difficult. they face assumptions their candidates are not electable, the party is not viable, and huge startup costs to be taken seriously in the competition. we tend to see these one offs like ross perot running as an independent, but not really creating any kind of coattails or any larger party apparatus behind him. it is extremely difficult, but i agree something like that would be a positive force in american politics. there are other structural democratic reforms that might be easier to achieve, including proportional representation systems at the state level. it will be hard to pass a lot of democratic structural reforms given how powerful the republican is in the united states.

not really more powerful than the democrats but powerful enough to block a lot of structural democratic reforms which the democratic party is more interested in passing. i see that as a major impediment. if you want to do something like abolish the electoral college or give d.c. statehood or some of these democratic structural reforms that have been put on the table, you not really going to be due that -- going to be able to do that in the short term given the almost total opposition to most of these proposals from republicans. host: you think abolishing the electoral college would help? guest: i think abolishing the electoral college would be a democratic move. i do not see any benefit in elevating the voices of certain states over the citizens of states with larger populations, which is in effect of the

electoral college, but maybe i'm biased as a california. host: this is mark from a democrat, good morning. caller: good morning and as always thank you for c-span. listening on the phone i almost lost track of what i originally called in about. jumping on something in earlier caller from florida mentioned, he said he had been listening to c-span forever going back to the days of brian lamb. i have, too. john, you asked him about what would be a good way to improve c-span. i think you need to get better fact checking and use fact checking during your collins -- during your call ins, and maybe you need to fact check the guest a little better. not so much this man. i have looked him up and it

looks like he has been at this trying to get the party together, trying to get people working together for many years, which looking at the way things are going now is not having a lot of success, it has only gotten worse. i might be an example of that because i am pretty polarized as a democrat who was once a regular republican. an example is earlier when you have the tax lady on. you read an article about 87,000 tax agents attacking all the middle class and how it was false and it was debunked. two calls later one of the republican callers's sake all of those agents are coming after the middle class. you have to have editors or background people on c-span to

follow up on this stuff instead of treating it as because it is speech and free speech is equivalent. host: i think the cast we had on repeated it is not 87,000 agents and talked about the total number of agents and responded to that caller. caller: yes. but they still call and say the same thing later on during commentary. maybe that is the reason for the polarization. nobody believes. your guest has had a couple of callers that say the reason we are polarized is because of the media and the government. that means they do not trust the media, they do not trust the government. where you go from there? if nothing is true you cannot believe nothing. host: rob willer on that and how long you have been working on this issue. guest: a lot of great points there. we have been working on this --

i have been working on fuller's asian related problems -- on polarization related problems for the better part of a decade. my research started around 2009 with research on political persuasion and how it would be possible to persuade people across r.g. partisan divide. that research was focused on the moral basis of political persuasion. in a nutshell we find in political psychology research that liberals and conservatives in the u.s. and around the world tend to have very different moral values, or substantially different moral values, but people overlook this when they make persuasive appeals intent to make persuasive appeals in terms of their own moral values, not the values of the people they are trying to persuade. if they articulate their appeals in terms of moral values of the other side from them their arguments often sound quite

intended to be more persuasive. we find making the argument for same-sex marriage in terms of patriotism and benefit to the country, which is doable, saying things like day americans are patriotic americans who serve in the military and contribute to our society, those appeals resonate more with conservatives than equality based appeals. that research was the first work out of my lab oriented towards trying to work with political divides. that work was focused on how do you still persuade people, how you still win elections, build large blocks of the public in support of issues that i cared about and care about now, and now we are doing work on restoring and defending democratic principles if we see the system under a threat. the long answer to a good question. we started off thinking let's be

most focused on how you can make social change in a polarized society. over last couple of years we've been more focused on how can we defend basic commitments to democracy in a divided country. hopefully we can wrap up that work soon and get back to how to effect social change in a highly polarized society because it is a little more fun and also we would like to not be so concerned about the base of democratic principles everything rests on. host: last call, sandy, houston, independent. caller: i just recently heard on c-span they did a study that 50% of registered voters -- they have lost 25% of their voters to independents, which means most

people are moderate. you were talking earlier about the hollowed out center. could you address that? guest: a really good question. independents are fascinating folks. one thing that is worth noting about independents as well is most research shows there are more independents than democrats or republicans, i would say it is south and 50%. the gist of the question is exactly right. a ton of independents and a larger number than democrats or republicans. a big chunk of those independents are effectively democrats or republicans. the way we ask the question is are you a democrat, republican, independent? and we asked a follow-up question saint you lean or lead republican? two thirds of independents will identify they lean towards one of the parties. research suggests they also act

like they are registered democrats or republicans in terms of being roughly as inclined to do straight ticket voting, having animosity towards the other party that are quite high, that explanation is these are folks who are more or less partisan. 60% of independents are roughly speaking partisans, but maybe they are tired of polarization and may be do not love the party they tend to vote for in terms of party apparatus and top-down structure, or they are tired of the polarization narrative where they just like the idea of being independent-minded, which i think is entirely reasonable. for our research purposes we find it important to treat leaders as part of them. this study we focused on democrats and republicans views of one another and democracy and

we included leaners because if we did not we would be neglecting a huge portion of the american voting public that votes like partisans. host: this study is strengtheningdemocracychallenge. org. we will have to end it there. the director of the polarization and social change lab at stanford university. i previewed the time. come back and talk to us down the road. guest: absolutely. it was a pleasure. host: will return to the question we began with today, getting a reaction to president biden's plan to cancel thousands of dollars in federal student debt for millions of borrowers. if you have student debt, (202) 748-8000. if you paid off your student debt, (202) 748-8001. all others, (202) 748-8002.

we will get your calls right after the break. >> c-span has unfiltered coverage of the house january 6 committee hearings investigating the attack on the capital. go to c-span.org/january 6, our web resource page, to watch the latest videos of the hearings, and all of our coverage on the attack and subsequent investigation. we will also have reaction from members of congress and the white house as well as journalists and authors talking about the investigation. go to c-span.org/january 6 for a fast and easy way to watch when you cannot see it live. >> c-span brings you an unfiltered view of government. our newsletter word for word recaps the day for you from the halls of congress to daily press briefings to remarks from the president.

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we began our show with, talk about president biden's debt relief plan. he announced a plan that would affect millions of americans. (202) 748-8000 is the number if you currently have debt. (202) 748-8001 is the number if you paid off your student debt. all others, (202) 748-8002. go ahead and call in as we let you know what is happening later this afternoon on the c-span networks. at 2:00 eastern a look at youth violence, prime, and sentencing guidelines hosted by the sentencing project. live coverage at sea :00 eastern -- at 2:00 eastern. at 3:00 today, the bipartisan policy center will be hosting a discussion with immigration law experts on the role of the courts in reshaping u.s. immigration policy.

c-span, c-span.org, the free c-span now video app. 5:15 today the naval operations chief admiral will talk about his plans to modernize the u.s. fleet. that event is hosted by the heritage foundation on c-span, sees been.org, and the c-span video app. we turn to your calls and your thoughts and president biden student loan forgiveness program that will affect federal student loans, specifically if you have a federal pell grant, you could receive $20,000 in debt forgiveness. it is $10,000 for non-pell grant rollover. it applies only to those who make $125,000 a year. the president also announcing to continue the pause on federal student loan repayment.

that program has been paused. the repayments have been paused for about two and a half years, since march 2020. that was the news. getting your reaction this morning on the washington journal. brenda in new york, the line for those that have student loans. caller: thank you for taking my call. this needs to be challenged in the courts. these are legal documents. it needs to be challenged. this is ridiculous. you took the money. i do not owe the money. i've been paying my student loans back for 12 years. i have less than $1800. i'm not getting anything. i got suckered into one of those idt scams that new york state allow them to sell that crab and i've been told by the student loan lenders when i filed in the class action suit tough tittie

said the kitty. you signed the form. that is what every single american can do. otherwise mortgage and car loans and be the next to disappear. host: brian in florida, you are next. the line for those who have paid off the student loans. caller: good job, brenda. i think is a ridiculous idea. there is way too much corruption in this government and i do not see you talking about this, and the last guy about the surveys, talking about the division of democrats and republicans, why doesn't he talk about the corruption and get surveys about that? i paid my loan off? are they going to pay me back my money? it is ridiculous. they created this pandemic stuff, shut everything down and there been so many industries crushed, mine was. i cannot get a job back in my

industry. it is ridiculous. why is it there an uprising in this country of people that want to get back to america being america and working for a living instead of getting handouts. host: what line of work review in? caller: mike in seattle, the line for those who have student loans. how much do you have? caller: i currently have $140,000 i/o and i work for a critical issue. i work in the aerospace industry. after the military i paid my dues and i did what i had to do, i did not receive any help from the government. i lived in tampa. the guide tampa the just called, it is to cost peanuts to live in tampa, florida. it was between $800 and $1200

for a single family unit. i live in seattle. i pay over 22 hundred dollars for 700 square-foot apartment i lived in. mind you i make a pretty good wage because i'm an aerospace worker. i work as a contractor for the department of defense and i contribute to this country. my wife is a veterinarian. she has $240,000 worth of student loans and there are 397 veterinarian jobs open in the state of washington and not enough people to fill it because when students make that choice to get into a science field, there is a large cost of education they have to bear. my wife is a bit older than me. when i took my student loans out during the recession -- i have an interest rate of just under 10%. i entered a contract with the government and a third-party entity that it is totally

unviable and totally unfair. these older people, these boomers talk about pay for your fair share, if you were a white baby boomer, you had the world handed to you on the plate. you can buy a house and go to school for $100 a semester. it is crazy. people who work hard have to live in an economic environment and the cost of living is so high but all you do is play catch up. host: you talk about your military service. why not use the g.i. bill or the post-9/11 g.i. bill, was there any help from serving in the military to further your education after the military? caller: it was not enough. in the military i was a combat weatherman. i came out.

the school i wanted to go to did not necessarily work out the student loan thing for me. the military did not give me anything. george bush cut them while i was overseas in afghanistan. i graduated high school in 2001 and grew up in new york city. i joined the military to help my country after 9/11. never did i would expect i would come back to a destroyed economy, destroyed by republicans, and they threw it on our backs, the millenials, and said you are lazy and do not pay your fair share. we never had a fair economic environment and that is the problem. people who are older don't get it. our entire leadership, these guys do not have the intellectual capital. how are they supposed to run a modern economy?

the teacher earlier that cried, i cry every day because of by student loans. i wish i was hit by a bus because i cannot buy a home, i'm stuck economically, and it is awful. it gets you so angry and riled up. the economics did not work out. i wish everyone the best. god bless america. host: to albuquerque, new mexico. this is kelly. good morning. caller: good morning. i am gen x and i have had to reinvent myself quite a few times so i have had student loans and i've been able to pay them off. the first one was for a relatively small amount and took me 20 years. you cannot have a student loan and a car payment at the same time.

the second time i had to do it was after the recession and i thought i was pretty savvy. i did not expect to have to start school as a freshman. my first loan was through idt and those credits were transferable. with the recession had to start college with my daughter and i was not planning on that. it did save us -- the pell grant i was able to stay in my house. part of that was financial reasons and i thought i was savvy enough to navigate through the loans and i only needed a certain amount. all of the sudden they gave me $20,000 and i did not ask for $20 -- for $20,000 but they said that is the way it is. that is a burden. i was able to pay it off because i got another degree out of it

and it helped me financially and i could get it with a second job. i do not feel bad we will forgive some of these loans because my sister got into that situation and she went on the run from her student loans, and now she is a big maga person because i think she is still mad about having to run away from her student loans and finally get caught. host: what happened when she got caught? caller: she did have to pay back money. they garnished her wages. people get scared. they do different things. i do not think it is fair for a lot of people to try and fail and then have this hanging over their heads. in this environment i think it is the right thing to do because we could have some anymore

people that get a fresh start and could go on with their lives. i am ok with it. guest: -- host: from new mexico to the tar heel state, this is alex burlington. caller: thank you for taking my call. i just wanted to piggyback on the earlier caller from georgia. she was talking about the public service loan forgiveness program. i have to say i agree with him. there are a lot of us who entered public service for different reasons and for different political affiliations. mine was a christian, i graduated from a christian college and believe that service to man is one of the highest things you can do. i think this world and this country would be a better place

if more people used some of their working life into public service. the government made a promise and we kept our end and i think they need to keep theirs. i hope this will be a bigger conversation on c-span. listening to the callers, do not care what your political affiliation is, there seems to be a lot of hurt going on and what is going on in the educational industrial complex, everybody keeps talking about the military-industrial complex, but there is another one in the educational industrial complex. a lot of people have been hurt by this. i cheerlead for people who are getting forgiveness and pell grant's. hooray for you guys. i cheerlead for you, i cheerlead for us. reach back and say what about

these guys? they put in the time and did the 10 years and they pay 10 years on their loans like they were supposed to, so a lot of us need to be grandfathered in. cheerlead for us. what would this world be if people in public service did not do the jobs others will not do? host: the second caller today to bring up the public service loan forgiveness program. the washington post in one of their follow-ups with a look at other student loan programs. the public service loan forgiveness program designed to entice graduates to go into teaching and law enforcement with the promise of debt forgiveness after years of service. to qualify people must make 120 on-time monthly payments for 10 years and have the remaining balance canceled and must work for the government or certain nonprofits.

they must have loans made directly by the federal government and be involved in specific repayment plans, those that cap monthly repayment plans to a percentage of their income. the rules are complex and people have complained, receiving bad advice from loan servicing companies hired by the education department leading them to believe they were making qualified payments they were not. congress and the department created temporary fixes so payments made in the wrong plan can be credited towards the forgive best. that department waiver said to expire at the end of october. that on the public service loan forgiveness program. mary in new jersey on the line for those who paid off their student debts. good morning. caller: good morning and thank you for c-span. it took my sister and i at least 10 years to pay back our loan. back then, i am going back may be 50 years, people were

responsible enough to know that if they had a debt that had to be paid, they paid it. they did not try to get out of not paying it. you look at things the way they are now, and in line with your previous segment, why the country is polarized, this is a perfect example. this is one issue. i just keep wondering what the american people are going to do and when they are going to do it. we see things around us from blinged little by little. this is the perfect example. if you are a responsible person, you satisfy your debts. you do not question it. you pay your debts. when you look at what biden did yesterday, he keeps doing these things. a lot of people feel it is for votes. i think it is for votes, and it is wrong. we live in a country that is divided because of ideologies.

previously they were talking about the media, the government, it is the way people are. their moral and ethical and religious fiber. and still people -- until people start acting responsibly we will never get this country back. i do not know if your listeners know this, but there are at least two members in congress, ill hand omar and alexandria ocasio-cortez that have student loans. does that mean they will be paid off? that is wrong. what about all of these people who put their kids through college. my brother-in-law put his son through college. now we are supposed to stand back and pay other people's debts. host: to your question, the loan forgiveness only applies to those making over $125,000 a year.

member of congress's salary is around $170,000, so they would not apply. caller: thank you for correcting that. the bottom line is this. i do not care what dollar amount it involves. if you decided to go to college and you took a loan out, you are responsible for paying back that loan. host: got your point. that is very in new jersey. this is robert, also in the garden state. caller: i don't know where all this hatred is coming from. i do not get this argument that i paid off my student loans fair and square so everybody should have to. if i got hit by a part of my street in the time -- and the town puts up a speedbump so no one else gets hit by a car, i would not say i got hit by a car the old-fashioned way, i think everybody else should have to get hit by a car. most of these loans are extremely predatory and people

took them out when they were 18 years old, sometimes when they were 17 years old. i feel like people everywhere need to be a little bit more compassionate. whatever happened to love and fellow human being and wanting them to have the most dignified and fulfilling life? host: that is robert in new jersey. to alexandria, virginia. good morning. caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call. host: you're on the line for those that have student debt. how much do you have? caller: i have around $40,000 and i think the president did the right thing. i get that a lot of people are frustrated and angry that they already paid off their student loan debt and some did not take student loan debts, but that is how life is. life is unfair. host: you qualify under the parameters laid out by the

president yesterday? caller: i do qualify for the $10,000. what i wanted to say is the thing about it, during the pandemic there were a lot of businesses and individuals who got the ppp loan. it was unfair to me, but that is how life is. i understand the frustration. they've already paid off their student loan debt. at the end of the day, even though it was a personal choice, decision made by a lot of us who have debt, society will benefit. if you have an education, at the end of the date whatever comfort your education might have on society and might benefit. i think the president did the right thing. host: maggie in california on the line for those who paid off their student debt. good morning. caller: good morning.

i want to throughout all of the love for all of the calls you are getting. i paid off debt but i also acquired initial debt, not that much. all of this hatred, i don't know. where is all of this hatred -- the banks got bailed out. i am a boomer. a lot of these young people think these boomers -- not everybody thinks alike. there are a lot of us who would like to see this done and i think the president did not go far enough. the banks. what about the housing crash, what about everything that happened to us because people at the top constantly get bailed out. somebody had mentioned the president did this for votes. probably.

what about all of the other politicians who make their votes for money? joe manchin. chuck schumer. mitch mcconnell. there is a bunch of them and they have been in washington for a long time. i cannot care less if congressional members who have just gone in get their loans paid off. it does not bother me one bit. i would like to see some relief. host: i wonder how you would respond to this from megan mcardle in today's washington post, part of her column. she writes "what do democrats do for an encore? students who start college next year will get the benefit of the more generous income-based repayment program but they will look rock -- they will look longingly at the recent graduates who got the better repayment terms of the $10,000 knocked off their debt. they will point out that this is unfair. they are worse off than their predecessors.

they will badger democratic politicians to help them out." what you think about that? caller: probably true. so what? these young people have to get more of an education to compete with today's economy. the majority of the jobs are in the service industry. fast food does not pay enough. the jobs have been sucked out of this country and they have been taken to indonesia, they have been taken to these sweatshop, this clothing that is just one time clothing. boomers and others have done this. the silent generation has done this to the younger people. they make promises they cannot keep and now we are having to deal with that. i would like to see the same people who are saying they paid off their college again -- their college loans -- i wonder, some of them -- where they went to school.

they call in and complain about everything else. when the housing market crashed people were selling their houses for these ridiculous amounts. it was unsustainable. i held onto my home. they had all crashed. the volume of my house came down even though i did not participate. host: we will stop there because i am running short of time. a bunch of colors still. this is alan in d.c.. caller: i/o still -- when i graduated college i had $97,000 student loans and i would often joke my college loans would probably outlive me because it was a 30 year student loan. every year for the past 30 years i've been paying $500 a month to pay for this loan it even if i get this forgiveness i will still have about $35,000 still. i could get the $20,000.

the issue of fair, the idea that first of all our young people are our country's greatest resource. why are we investing in that? the idea we are pitting the guys against each other, this country has always been full of inequality. if you think about how the fha loans or v.a. loans for veterans for white americans were able to allow white people to acquire houses and wealth and now these people are able to put their kids through college where other folks were not able to engage in borrowing money. there is a lot of inequities that happen within this country. host: will take the point. we want to get to peggy, last

caller on the line for those that have student debt. caller: i worked in the nuclear field reprocessing. i promised to give my life to my country but instead, i ended up having to give the life of all my children to my country. working in a toxic environment and i quick to recycle myself as a teacher to be around kids if i couldn't have anything. -- have any. the school had a toxic problem and when i tried to address that, i was fired. i have been on disability since

2000. there is no cure for this poisoning that i can find on the computer. i hope to go to occupational health services to see if the doctors have anything that is better that i can access online. now that i have a predatory lender, who never told me about any out when obama gave people forgiveness, and when president joe biden gave people forgiveness, they asked me, did you want to pay off your student loans. i said of course. host: peggy is our last call her but we will be back here tomorrow morning at -- 7 a.m.

eastern and 4 a.m. pacific. in the meantime, have a great day. ♪ >> linda thomas greenfield is showing how the united states is working with the international community to address global food selfridges -- shortages. at 2 p.m., a look at recent data on juvenile crime and possible read -- reform.

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