Thoughts on Reactions to My Student Loan Forgiveness Statement

Dear Mainer,

My recent statement about student loan forgiveness has touched off a lot of discussion, prompting questions like who are radical leftist elitists? Who are working-class Mainers? Should military service be celebrated or pitied? Are unions good, and are they an option for all workers? It has also raised questions about the merits of President Biden’s student loan forgiveness proposal itself. I’d like to continue the conversation.

Many of the critics of my statement have suggested that its target was anyone who wants their student loans, or a portion of them, forgiven. Many have expressed shock about the intensity of my words and surprise that I would speak so harshly to potential constituents. These were not the people I was speaking to. It might help to talk about what I mean by radical leftist elitists. 

Within our country’s political ecosystem, there are people who get paid to talk politics and advocate for the advancement of certain ideas and policies. Many of them work for political parties, so-called “think tanks,” special interest groups, and nonprofits engaging in political activity. Some of these groups advocate for important causes and give voice to issues that might otherwise not get the attention they deserve. However, the money that funds their work often comes from the super-rich who wield outsized power over our political system and government.

Most people who work at these kinds of places are required to have a college education, and many get paid a salary that places them among the top fifth of income earners nationally. A job like this places someone well within the political establishment, but it certainly doesn’t mean that they are either a radical leftist or a radical conservative. That status is earned by one’s actions.

A radical leftist elitist is ideologically rigid and close-minded and demonstrates open hostility or condescension toward anyone who holds differing viewpoints. For these people, any dissenting opinion must be the result of either bad character or ignorance. They are partisans who employ hardball tactics. They often express views that the working-class and rural people “vote against their economic interests,” that anyone who voted for Donald Trump is deplorable, and label anyone who disagrees with them a MAGA Republican, a coward, bigoted, or corrupt. 

Because I opposed President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, which was struck down by the courts, I was attacked by a political organization funded by difficult-to-trace dark money but with obvious connections to Washington D.C. political networks. The group came after me not with a strong defense of the policy it supports, but instead a broadside attack against my character and that of my colleague Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. Some people have protested the vehemence of my statement in response to that attack, but where I come from, personal attacks of this nature are not taken sitting down. 

So, in summary, radical leftist elitists have these main components: a college degree(s), work in politics, and make a salary that is in the top fifth of wage earners; their preferred political tactic for dealing with credible differences of opinion about matters of policy is to lash out with personal attacks questioning someone’s intelligence, motives, or ethics; and their operations are often funded through legal, but corrupt, loopholes that allow millionaires and billionaires to funnel unlimited amounts of money into politics without transparency.

Now let’s touch on another sensitive matter – class and politics. I believe that class is more than just economics and how much money you make or have in the bank or the assets you own. Recently, a political opinion writer described me as living in the cocoon of my present work in politics and my past service in the military and, therefore, out of step with the working class. This fragment of my work history ignores the fact that I spent many years working at the business that belongs to my mother, and before her, to her father. Like many small businesses, much of its value is tied up in loans owned by banks. But that business is more than just about making money for my mother, it’s also about her family, and it’s about the lifestyle it enabled her to build along with her husband, my father, as they raised three kids in the place where they both live and work and still work today. Like many parents, they put big money on the table, borrowing against their own assets to help fund college for their kids. 

Class structure in a society is under constant realignment and formation. It includes some mixture of how you make your money, what a good life means to you, where you come from and where you live, the traditions and institutions you hold dear or don’t prescribe to, the values you use to set your compass, your level of educational attainment and how you use it – and this isn’t an exhaustive list. A lot of political actors want to talk about class like it’s just straight dollars and cents. It’s more complicated than that. When we reduce class to the possession of wealth and money to spend, and we accept the premise that the objective of life must be to climb up a rung or two of the class ladder, I believe that we sell our society short. A rich life is not always the result of the accumulation of more and more financial wealth.

One thing that has been made clear by many responses to my earlier statement about college loan forgiveness is that some people view military service as an unfortunate job that poor or working-class people sometimes do as some kind of economic bargain with the government. I started college after graduating high school, but left after completing one year of studies to join the Marines. I did that because the 9/11 attacks left me feeling a combination of anger against the terrorists who did it, a strong love of country, and a desire to do my part in a time of national crisis. In my view, service to the country is good, period. I believe that a powerful nation becomes a danger to itself and to the world when its citizens see military service as a negative to be suffered by an unfortunate few, rather than as an obligation and even an honor in a free society.

Coming home from Afghanistan and Iraq, I worked full-time at a motorhome center for about eight dollars an hour. I worked part-time at a pizza joint for about the same. And I sometimes picked up extra work on top of that. I appreciate the people who gave me that work, respect the people I worked with, and value what I learned doing those jobs. I went to Bates College using veterans education benefits and got a degree studying government and American history. After I graduated, I worked for a logistics business before I went to work for Senator Susan Collins. I’ve been involved in politics for 12 years now.

As I represent the people of Maine’s Second District in Congress (ME-02), I value the things I learned at Bates College, especially the critical thinking that I put to use in Congress, but I doubt that my constituents elected me because I have a college degree. Instead, my gut tells me it’s because they know that I grew up in a community not unlike theirs. My life experience is not uncommon and is, therefore, familiar, and they know that I will use the knowledge gained from living it as I go about the work of representing them in Congress. It’s an honor and a privilege to do it.

Congressional salary is set at $174,000. Like most of my constituents, I owe a lot of money on my house, my truck, and my wife’s car, and share responsibility for her college debt. I watched her work incredibly hard at the University of Maine School of Law, and I’m so proud of her. I’m also proud that we are going to pay that debt back ourselves. I don’t think the government should forgive any of her college debt, and because the proposal's rules set 2021 income as the marker for eligibility, she would have qualified. My wife disagrees with me, by the way, and that’s okay. As a general rule, I don’t support policies that would benefit my household, not because it would present any conflict of interest (legally, it wouldn’t) but because I don’t think we need the help, and the same is true of many others like us. 

President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan would have forgiven up to $10,000 in student debt for an individual making $125,000 ($250,000 for a married couple). That sets the income eligibility threshold way too high. The median household income in ME-02 is $56,000. I know there are people with crippling college debt that they simply can’t pay back, and I can see why a well-targeted loan forgiveness program might be in the public interest. But let’s not ignore the facts of the Biden plan: it would have transferred many billions of dollars of wealth to affluent households that are well-positioned to accumulate even greater wealth over a lifetime of work. In ME-02, only 29 percent of my constituents have a college degree, and only 18 percent would have qualified under the forgiveness plan. Nationally, 17 percent of adults have federal student debt, and nearly half of that debt is held by one-tenth of those individuals. According to a recent study, blanket forgiveness of $10,000 in student loans would have meant that for every $1 of student loan forgiveness that would have gone to the bottom 10 percent of households, $3.60 would have gone to the top 10 percent. That’s upside down, and it’s wrong – not one penny should go to anyone in the top 10 percent. 

This poorly crafted fiscal policy was unaccompanied by any meaningful reforms to put a stop to the ever-escalating cost of a college education. Real reform would cap the interest rates that banks can levy for education loans. It would double the dollar amount provided by Pell Grants to help lower-income families pay for college. It might tie federal money to college performance standards that better gauge if a school's programs make for a good return on investment: job placement, average wages, etc. An underperforming college could lose its tax-exempt status or be required to underwrite a student’s loans. 

Let’s also think outside the box and ask hard questions. Is it bad to be working-class and good to be upper-class? Why do we simultaneously argue that the cost of a college education is crushing one generation while lending support to the myth that to succeed the next generation must get a college education? Perhaps we should question the logic of an economic and higher education system that forces young men and women to borrow against their future to “get ahead.” Instead of accepting the rules of this game that disadvantages so many people, maybe we should instead demand higher wages that allow for a standard of living that shows respect for the contributions that the working classes bring to the table for our country and in our communities.

I said in my statement that more people should look to unions and apprenticeship programs that teach a skilled trade. I think this would be good not only for many individuals but also for Maine and for the country. We need skilled tradespeople who can make things. We need to ensure that we are independent instead of dependent on the skills of foreign workers and the production power of another country. And we need skilled professionals who can fix things so we aren’t individually dependent on giant multinational corporations that would prefer to sell us newer and newer things before the full value of what we have already bought has been exhausted. These are only a few reasons why we should support and invest in skilled tradespeople. 

Valuing such people means, in part, that we must pay them for their full worth. I agree with some of my recent detractors that federal policies favor capital over labor, but I also think that they need to look at the hard battles that union workers are engaging in and winning all over the country. It is possible to form or join a union even if it isn’t easy – looking back at history, it was never easy. I’m all in for federal policies that will strengthen unions, protect collective bargaining, and support workers on strike. 

I hope this letter advances the conversation about student loan forgiveness even further. My final thought is this – reasonable people can debate and disagree about the merits of this idea – but pegging those who oppose it as corrupt, racist, or out-of-touch only serves to further undermine, what was from my perspective, an already weak policy proposal.