air act. he might, as well have been talking about student loan rates or the voting rights act because in today s climate, even a conservative farm bill that will strips $21 billion in food assistance from needy families cannot pass the house because 62 republicans didn t think it was severe enough. joining us now is democratic congressman chris van hollen of maryland. good afternoon, martin. i want to start with the supreme court decision. chief justice roberts said if you want a functioning voting rights act, congress feeds to come together to create one. given what you witness every day at work, will june 25th, 2013 go down as the day the voting rights act died? that s what worries me, martin. this was an outrageous display of judicial arrogance because you just talked about the very few times when we ve had big overwhelming bipartisan votes in the congress. one of them was in 2006 for the
in the second amendment case, was totally consistent with second amendment rights. so at this point, maybe within the hard-core of their membership who get this unrelenting messaging, it may sort of stick with them. but i think again the broad public still i think aghast that the senate and the house have not moved quicker to deal with something that i think again most people recognize as pure common sense. yeah. and most people also recognize that if students loans go up in about two weeks, they ll double from the current i believe 3.4% interest rate to 6.. and are you trying to do something about that, as well. again, it s been difficult to do anything in congress. are you optimistic about preventing student loan rates from doubling in two weeks? well, last thursday i filed a discharge petition to get consideration of a bill which will protect that lower rate for two years. within 24 hours we had 186
case that this economic recovery that we re having is really favoring women, although we have a pay inequity issue that needs to be addressed in this country. that s what i m hearing. it is. but wages aren t rising fast enough for anybody. labor, male or female, is not sharing in the gains of this alleged recovery. let s not forget, we are actually rewarding corporations with tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas still, and that s got to like stop. what about student loan rates? i mean, coming up the first part of august, we re going to see the interest rate go to an astronomical of over 6% when banks, of course, get it for half a percent from the fed. there is a terrible inequity there. are we going to see a resurgence in the trades, or are we going to see more and more trade school type opportunities for young people? where are young people going? zerlina, you re just out with a
parents and students could get cheap loans, the average tuition cost rose 71%. at public universities, tuition costs have more than doubled. president obama called on congress to freeze student loan rates as part of an effort to keep higher education from getting out of reach. we can not price the middle class or folks who are willing to work hard out of a college education. we can t keep saddling young people with more and more and more debt just as they re starting out in life. so as college has become more cost prohibitive, universities are being forced to come up with new ways to get students to enroll. schools are offering record amounts of financial assistance to incoming freshman. other universities are freezing tuition and cutting costs to make their programs more attractive. this spring, purdue university announced it will freeze tuition at its flagship campus. mitch daniels is the president
democrats are not going to be on board with, because they are the kinds of things that raise the bar so high that it might jeopardize the ability of the people who are here undocumented to get eventually legaç status and ultimately citizenship, so it is, i think that it depends and in the battle right now that is not just between the pro immigration or the anti-immigration factions of the political party, but the battle is between the district and the states and the next election, and party strategists who are concerned with the party s long term viability as a, you know, national party in the long run. so many calculations that are going into what policies are getting done or not getting done and in is a big concern for people with student loans set to double on july 1st, and the student loan rates are 3.4% and by july 1st, 6.8%. i mean, this is just insane, monika, and you said that the student loan debt will surpass