republicans are so worried. you said extremists. are you talking even about extremists in your own party, is that what you mean when you say extremist? well, i think front and center are the people trying to overturn the democracy. people like jd vance, who i m running against, who supports the dobbs decision, which is the largest governmental overreach into the private lives of american citizens in the history of our lifetime. here s a guy who started a sham nonprofit to help people with addiction and didn t spend a nickel on them and brought in a purdue pharma spokesperson in southern ohio. the very company that caused the opiate addiction in the first place. i mean, these are some super extreme views. he raised money for the people who stormed the capitol on january 6th. he raised money for their legal defense fund. i mean, how extreme can you be? so, we need to come back to the middle and govern the country. those are the extremists we have to be most worried about, but also th
wrong message. why? well, i think given this time, again, i understand the burden of it. my wife and i are still paying her student loans off, but there are a lot of people hurting in our society right now. people are getting crushed with inflation, crushed with gas prices, food prices and all the rest. and i think a targeted approach right now really does send the wrong message. there are a lot of people making 30, 40 grand a year that didn t go to college and they need help as well, which is why i ve been proposing a tax cut for working people that will affect everybody and with the student loan piece, you could very easily allow them to negotiate renegotiate down the interest rates. that s part of the problem is the interest rates are 9%, 10%, 12%. so, giving them an opportunity to renegotiate those down will put significant money in their pocket, and i think relieve some of that purd. to just have a targeted approach now, this is part of a broader problem now, too, dana, one of
you may have understood, targeting president biden s student loan forgiveness plan. it s already become a hot issue on the trail. we saw earlier in the program that there s a divide even within the democratic party. turns out we have a divide at this table. paul begala, i ll start with you. policy as well as politics. for that amount of money, you could fund free pre-k for every 3 and 4-year-old for ten years. you can do a lot more good for poor people, communities of color and the underprivileged by doing pre-k. you could forgive all medical debt, which unlike student debt is not freely entered into. democrats, i m a progressive, i want to help folks. but i think this is terrible policy. the politics of it, we saw. tim ryan is in a tough race in a tough state, and he can t stand this idea. senator warren is all for it. she s not exactly from a swing state in massachusetts. senator cortez masto doesn t like this. michael bennet, he doesn t like
inflationary crisis. again, individuals take on loans. i had loans. i pay $238.07 for three years between my wife and i to pay student loans back. we were happy to pay it, low interest loans. you write your check, you move on. and i take exception with individuals, especially out of washington, saying this is a student loan crisis. what s the crisis? folks get a degree, they get a job, we have more high-paying jobs than ever before for young people. there are low interest loans, they ve been deferred for a couple of years. the average loan, it s high. it s about $43,000 in america. that s a lot of money. you can write that $200 or $300 check a month and pay it. one thing i look add, the average home loan in america is about $240,000. five times, four, five times what the student loan is. do we have a home loan crisis? how about auto loans, are we going to pay off auto loans next? the fact we re going to
slower growth and softer labor market conditions will bring down inflation, they will also bring some pain to households and businesses. these are the unfortunate costs of reducing inflation. is raising interest rates again a mistake? how likely do you think it is that a recession is coming if the interest rates continue to go up? i just want to translate what jerome powell just said. what he calls some pain means putting people out of work, shutting down small businesses, because the cost of money goes up, because the interest rates go up. so it sounds like you do think it s a mistake to raise interest rates again? i am very worried about this because the causes of inflation, things like the fact that covid is still shutting down parts of the economy around the world, that we still have supply chain kinks, that we still have a war going on in ukraine that drives up the cost of energy, and that we still have these giant