0:04

On this episode of News World. On Monday,

0:07

April eighth, the Biden deministration

0:09

released details of their new student

0:11

loan debt forgiveness plan for nearly

0:14

thirty million borrowers. The

0:16

proposal still needs to be finalized

0:18

and will almost certainly be challenged

0:20

in court. However, Biden

0:22

administration officials have said they

0:25

could begin handing out some of

0:27

the debt relief, including canceling up

0:29

to twenty thousand dollars in interest, as

0:32

soon as this fall. The plan

0:34

would reduce payments for twenty five

0:36

million borrowers and erase all

0:38

debt for more than four million Americans.

0:42

About forty three million people are

0:44

carrying one trillion, seven

0:47

hundred billion dollars in student

0:49

debt, joining me to discuss the

0:51

proposed new student loan debt forgiveness

0:54

plan. I am really pleased to

0:56

welcome my guest, Adam Kissel.

0:58

He is a visiting fellow in the Hair Foundation

1:00

Center for Education Policy, and

1:03

he previously served as Deputy

1:05

Assistant Secretary for Higher Education

1:07

Programs at the US Department of Education.

1:21

Adam, welcome, and thank you for joining

1:23

me on New World.

1:25

It's a pleasure to be here.

1:26

Thank you so on

1:29

Monday, April eight, Biden unveiled

1:31

this new student loan that

1:33

forgiveness plan that would help about thirty

1:35

million borrowers or rayed some or

1:38

all of their loans. What

1:40

would the plan actually look like.

1:43

We haven't seen the details yet,

1:45

but we do have some bullet points and we've

1:47

seen some documents out of what's called

1:49

negotiated rulemaking, which

1:52

would have a number of different features

1:54

to it. One is that if

1:58

you're is

2:00

higher after a couple of years than

2:03

the amount that you originally took out, you're

2:05

considered to have a kind of hardship that the Secretary

2:08

can use to waive your debt interest

2:10

up to twenty thousand dollars. So

2:13

for people who have had debt

2:16

over the course of many years, their

2:19

interest payments and principle

2:22

might be much higher than

2:25

their original debt. And

2:27

that could be because they've been in deferment

2:29

and they've paid the minimum amount and

2:32

it's unclear whether they really have a hardship

2:34

or not because they've just been

2:36

on an income contingent repayment

2:39

plan. But it doesn't matter to the

2:41

Biden administration. They want

2:43

to cut as much debt as they possibly can,

2:46

and that's why up to twenty thousand

2:48

in interest for that category of

2:51

borrowers would simply be

2:53

wiped off of their debt and of course transferred

2:56

to one hundred million taxpayers who

2:58

will be holding the bag for that. There

3:00

are some other bullet points released

3:03

by the administration that would

3:05

be targeted at borrowers

3:08

and other categories. So, for

3:10

instance, if your

3:12

debt has been in repayment for twenty

3:15

or twenty five years or more, then

3:18

your debt might just simply be canceled. And

3:21

again, cancel doesn't mean that it

3:23

goes away. It becomes money

3:25

that somebody else is going to have to pay. And

3:28

then there's a third category that will

3:30

also have many people in it, which

3:33

is an accountability measure,

3:35

which is that if you look

3:37

at the debt a

3:39

few years out after someone graduates and

3:42

their income a few years out, you

3:44

can calculate a debt to income ratio,

3:47

and if that ratio is bad,

3:50

and doing that program by program, college

3:53

by college, if that ratio

3:56

is bad, then you're

3:58

perceived to have a low financial value

4:01

degree. And if

4:03

you're in a low financial value degree program,

4:07

then you might have your debt canceled as

4:09

well. So there are some smaller

4:12

categories, but those I think are

4:14

the three biggest. And then there's a catch

4:16

all, which is that if

4:18

the Secretary decides that you have a hardship

4:21

for any reason, the Secretary

4:23

could cancel all of your debt. And

4:26

one of the ideas that the Secretary has proposed

4:29

is that if you haven't been paying your

4:32

student loans for a certain number of months,

4:34

I guess you must have a hardship. So

4:37

just imagine how that loophole will be abused.

4:40

Those are the biggest parts.

4:41

How does this differ from

4:44

the first Biden debt

4:46

free giveness plan back in twenty twenty

4:48

two.

4:49

The earlier plan relied on the

4:51

Heroes Act, which was meant

4:54

especially for actual American

4:56

heroes, people who say we're

4:58

serving in a foreign country for

5:00

some reason, perhaps because of a natural

5:02

disaster, but because perhaps they've

5:05

been in a war or conflict,

5:07

that they haven't been able to pay their student loans

5:10

on time, And that very

5:12

specific exception was

5:15

part of the original law. At a later

5:17

point, the Heroes Act

5:19

was amended so that anyone affected

5:22

by a major disaster who

5:25

specifically had a problem

5:28

paying off their debt because of the disaster could

5:30

have a certain amount of debt cancelation. But

5:33

what the Secretary of Education did is

5:36

decided that the entire United States

5:38

was a disaster area because

5:41

of the COVID nineteen response. Therefore,

5:44

every barrower in the world will

5:47

separate the United States from their Every barwer

5:50

had some impact from the

5:52

COVID nineteen response, and therefore

5:55

they had by definition a

5:59

hardship related to the disaster, and

6:01

therefore they were getting ten or twenty

6:04

thousand dollars cut off of their

6:06

debt. That was a very specific

6:08

misuse of a law.

6:11

The current scheme doesn't

6:14

use the Heroes Act at all, and we can talk

6:16

about that.

6:17

The Supreme Court said that

6:19

Biden clearly had exceeded his authority

6:23

as defined by Congress in

6:25

the Heroes Act. So, as I gather,

6:27

apparently Biden's lawyers

6:29

then went out read the Supreme Court

6:31

decision very carefully and tried

6:34

to figure out a new loophole that

6:36

they could get all this money through. Now

6:38

you called the last plan under the Heroes

6:40

Act quote, a new socialism

6:43

of higher education. Pay only what

6:45

you can, the minimum ount vanishes

6:47

towards zero, and the taxpayer will cover

6:50

the rest. Do you really see this as

6:52

that radical break from

6:54

any kind of merit based system

6:57

I do.

6:58

And the lawsuit

7:00

from seven states against this latest plan

7:03

helps us see why that's the case. So

7:06

a student loan program is meant

7:08

to be about helping people go

7:10

to college. You take out a loan, and you're responsible

7:12

and you pay it back. And the

7:14

current system

7:17

says that for about every ten

7:19

thousand dollars of student debt, the government

7:22

was making money back. People were

7:25

encouraged to be responsible enough and

7:27

they would pay back about ten thousand, five hundred

7:29

dollars for every ten thousand dollars of debt.

7:32

The new scheme does socialize

7:34

higher education because we're

7:36

all going to be paying because for every ten thousand

7:39

dollars of debt, there's about only

7:41

seven thousand dollars that is expected to

7:43

come back to the public treasury. So

7:46

the loan program has

7:49

been transmogrified into

7:51

a grant program. And when you're talking

7:53

about a transfer of money from one set

7:56

of Americans to another, you've really

7:59

taken a turn towards socialism. And

8:01

this idea of free college is what the

8:04

Biden administration is all about these days.

8:07

What is the new loophole? How have they decided

8:10

that even though the court has said no, you can't do

8:12

it. They figured out a way you can

8:14

do it.

8:16

Well, they still can't do it, So they're not going

8:18

to win in court, as my prediction. But

8:21

the Heroes Act was a very

8:23

specific part of the law. That was the authority

8:26

that the Education Department was using

8:28

as its justification for the

8:30

debt cancelation. But the

8:33

new authority that they're using is not out of

8:35

the Heroes Act. It's out of the Secretary's

8:37

overall waiver authority to

8:40

waive the rules when someone is

8:43

a distressed borrower. And

8:45

that idea is what the

8:49

Education Department is using as a wedge

8:51

to declare all kinds of

8:53

borrowers as distressed borrowers.

8:57

It did that for what's

8:59

called the Say Plan, which is for

9:02

alumni who are on an income

9:04

based repayment plan, which we

9:06

haven't talked about yet, and it's

9:08

doing it prospectively

9:11

for this so called Plan B. But to me, it's

9:13

planed C because of the Safe Plan option

9:17

to find twenty five million

9:19

more people and say that they are distressed borrowers

9:22

and deserve a secretarial

9:24

waiver of paying their student loans.

9:27

What is the theory of a distressed

9:29

borrower? I mean a person who's

9:32

just made a series of bad decisions, or

9:34

a person who went into a low income job

9:36

or what.

9:38

So the traditional idea of a distressed

9:40

borrower is common sense. It's

9:42

someone, say, who has declared bankruptcy

9:45

or has extreme financial

9:47

trouble in their life where they actually

9:49

can't pay off their debts. It's

9:52

not someone whose debt just happens to

9:54

be higher than the amount that they took out,

9:56

or who still has debt twenty

9:58

or twenty five years later. So even

10:02

in the Save Plan, the

10:04

idea was that if you would benefit from

10:06

paying a lower amount, then you must

10:08

be a distressed borrower. So the term

10:10

itself has been stretched beyond any

10:12

reasonable recognition. So when a

10:15

court looks at it, the court will

10:17

say that's arbitrary and capricious

10:19

that you can't say a distressed borrower

10:22

is someone who's not distressed but will benefit

10:24

from the new terms of the agreement.

10:45

They now have a number of steps they've got to take

10:47

to actually try to implement it. On the

10:50

bureaucratic side, what are the steps that the

10:52

Department of Education has to do in

10:55

order to try to actually get the

10:57

money to people.

10:58

Well, under the Heroes Plan, The

11:00

main reason that the department lost was

11:03

it was so lawless. It just declared what it

11:06

was going to do. There is no process

11:08

that included notice and comment of the

11:11

public, which is normally required when

11:14

the government is going to do something different

11:16

from a regulatory point of view, and the

11:18

major questions doctrine came in. So

11:20

when there was something that was of huge political

11:23

and economic significance, Congress

11:25

had to authorize it, and Congress didn't

11:28

authorize it. That's what we're going to

11:30

see again. Congress has not authorized

11:32

twenty five million people to get half

11:34

a trillion or a trillion dollars of

11:36

student debt, forgiven. But what the department

11:39

is trying to do is trying to at least get

11:41

notice and comment from the public. So

11:44

they've gone through what's called negotiated rule making,

11:46

which is a special kind of rulemaking

11:49

that is almost unique to

11:51

the Education Department, where they go through

11:53

a number of meetings with representatives

11:55

of different groups such

11:57

as borrowers, such as national

12:00

organizations that work on student debt issues,

12:03

and they get representatives of all of those constituency

12:06

groups in a room and they try to come

12:08

to consensus about a new regulation

12:11

that would address an issue,

12:14

so they brought a bunch of those people into a room.

12:17

Of course, they had nobody

12:19

from our side of the aisle who

12:22

would think that student LAN

12:24

cancelation is bad. From the beginning, they

12:26

left us out, but they negotiated.

12:29

They negotiated, and they still couldn't

12:31

come to consensus. So what happens

12:33

when the Department can't come to consensus

12:35

with these representatives of the public is

12:38

they are completely free to write

12:40

up their own regulation the way they want. So

12:43

that's what's going to happen. They've been writing

12:45

up their own regulation the way they want. They

12:48

announced, especially through the President

12:50

on Monday, they're going to do this, this, and

12:53

this, and we have to wait to see

12:55

what the exact text of the regulations

12:57

are. Then the public

13:00

has a chance to comment, hopefully sixty

13:02

or ninety days, since there's so much going on, but

13:05

the Department could say thirty days.

13:08

And if the Department says thirty days, that

13:10

will probably become part of the lawsuit

13:12

because it's not enough time to read

13:15

all of these pages of regulations. But

13:17

at that point they'll have their comments. They

13:20

have to produce a final regulation which

13:22

shows that they've addressed

13:24

all of the public's comments and

13:27

show why they did or didn't do what the

13:29

commenters wanted. And

13:31

if they do that badly, that would be another basis

13:33

for a lawsuit because they're

13:35

being arbitrary and capricious and not actually

13:38

responding to the comments. But

13:40

once they get through all of that, and it could be one hundred thousand

13:43

comments, so it could take them months, or

13:45

it could be a small number of comments. But once they

13:47

do that, it becomes final and

13:49

then it will be subject to litigation,

13:52

likely maybe by eighteen or twenty

13:54

more states, and so likely

13:57

it will then be put on hold while judges

14:00

look at the details.

14:02

So is the current multi

14:04

state lawsuit about

14:06

the first round of Biden give

14:09

a ways or is it about this new one.

14:11

What I called the plan b in between, So

14:15

in between the first round

14:17

and this current round, there was a different

14:19

round that was a revision

14:22

of a particular income based

14:24

or repayment program that

14:26

has the acronym repaye

14:29

the repay program. They

14:31

changed its name to the Save program,

14:34

and they did that with only thirty days notice

14:36

in comment. So it was arbitrary

14:39

and capricious and listened to what they did. The

14:41

original plan said that one

14:43

hundred and fifty percent of the poverty line of your

14:45

income would be exempt from

14:48

this income based calculation. The

14:50

new rule was two hundred and twenty five percent

14:52

of the poverty line would be exempt.

14:55

In addition, additional categories

14:58

of your income were a So

15:01

once they've done that, the next question

15:03

is how much of your disposable income

15:05

do you have to pay? And the

15:07

rule went from ten percent to five percent.

15:10

And then the next question is how

15:12

many months in a row do you have to

15:14

pay before the rest of your debt

15:16

is simply canceled. It

15:19

used to be twenty years and it was changed

15:21

to ten years. So you're basically

15:23

getting about eighty five percent off compared

15:25

to the old plant. So eighteen

15:28

states are now saying that's

15:30

bad for a bunch of reasons, and that's

15:32

what they're suing over.

15:33

Is it very common to have this

15:36

many states come together and

15:38

follow lawsuit against the president?

15:40

It seems unprecedented to me. Eighteen

15:42

states in two different lawsuits. You

15:44

may know from your experience something different,

15:47

but that sounds like

15:49

about the highest number of states that have gotten together

15:51

on anything in quite a while.

15:53

And the other part of that is, as you pointed

15:55

earlier, it's not like they're wiping

15:57

the debt out, they're transferring it. Correct,

16:01

so it's actually going to end up being

16:03

part of the national deficit. Well,

16:05

all of us are going to pay interest on it.

16:07

The study you know at Wharton that

16:10

they came out and said plan

16:12

would cost somewhere between five

16:14

hundred and nineteen billion over ten

16:16

years and could rise to over a

16:18

trillion. So, I

16:21

mean Biden is massively increasing

16:23

the national debt across the board.

16:26

And this is just one more example of

16:28

borrowing from our children and grandchildren.

16:30

Absolutely, if you think about it, every trillion

16:32

dollars is what three thousand dollars per

16:35

American citizen, So

16:38

this is not just a question of dispersed

16:41

costs and concentrated benefits. Even the

16:43

dispersed costs come out to

16:45

say three thousand dollars per person. So

16:47

this is real money for every person, every taxpayer.

16:50

And when only twenty five million to thirty

16:52

million people are getting some cancelation

16:57

and at least seventy

16:59

million are going

17:01

to have to pay for it plus of their kids

17:03

and grandkids, the voter calculation

17:05

doesn't come out as nicely as maybe the Biden

17:08

administration thinks. So if

17:10

they're thinking they're going to get a bunch of votes out

17:12

of this. They have to remember there's tens

17:14

of millions of people who are upset with us.

17:16

First of all. Of course, when I went to school, I borrowed

17:18

money and it took me probably

17:21

fifteen years to pay it off. Close

17:23

to had a similar experience. So I

17:25

understand the notion of some level

17:27

of personal responsibility. But isn't

17:30

it true also that the

17:32

way Biden is proposing it, there's no

17:34

income limitation. So you can be a

17:36

Harvard educated lawyer making

17:39

a couple million dollars a year and you're

17:41

suddenly going to have your loan paid

17:43

off by the Treasury, by

17:46

the taxpayer. And effect so some

17:48

poor person out here working as

17:50

a plumber or working at Wendy's

17:53

is now going to have a burden because

17:55

the four hundred thousand dollars a year of Harvard

17:57

lawyer is being helped out Joe

18:00

Biden and by entire Biden

18:02

team.

18:04

That's completely right. That's why my colleagues

18:06

and I at the Heritage Foundation called this a

18:08

regressive scheme. And

18:12

it's true that on

18:14

the pay for side that

18:18

a lot of the people who are paying taxes are

18:20

paying more if they earn more.

18:23

Nevertheless, it's true that lots and lots

18:26

of say, plumbers and folks

18:28

who didn't go to college, and people who chose

18:31

to go into the military instead of having college

18:33

debt, and people who are responsible

18:35

and paid off their college debt. These categories

18:37

and more are paying for,

18:39

as you suggested, potentially

18:42

the four hundred thousand dollars a year Harvard

18:44

Law School graduate at a white shoe firm

18:46

simply because they are pretended

18:49

to have financial hardship by the Education Department

18:52

and would qualify for one of these waivers.

19:10

You also have a situation where

19:13

Biden, I think pretty desperate to

19:15

get money to them before the election is

19:18

basically just a classic old time

19:20

vote buying gimmick. And your

19:22

judgment, can they get through

19:24

all the court challenges enough to

19:26

actually get money to voters

19:29

before the.

19:29

Election, I think there's very

19:32

little chance that they will. They

19:35

could get through the injunction

19:37

phase fairly quickly if

19:40

the Supreme Court is willing to

19:42

look at the case before

19:44

November. So as

19:47

you know, what will happen when there's

19:49

a lawsuit is there'll be a request to

19:51

put the new regulations on hold, and

19:54

then you have to do a balance of harms and decide

19:57

as well on the merits as

19:59

quickly as you can figure them out. What would

20:01

happen if we hold the regulation right

20:03

now and don't forgive any debt? And

20:06

I think the answer would be if people

20:08

have to pay on their student loans a few

20:10

extra months, that harm

20:12

is pretty low compared to simply

20:14

giving away half a trillion dollars. So

20:17

I think there's a good chance that an

20:19

injunction would find

20:22

the balance of harms on the side of the eighteen states.

20:25

Supposing all eighteen of them sue again, it

20:27

would be hard to get through all

20:30

those levels of court, starting with the

20:32

federal district court and appellate court

20:34

and then the Supreme Court. Certainly not the whole

20:36

case by November, but

20:38

at least the injunction request.

20:41

Now does that matter for the Biden administration

20:43

because they can still say all of these red

20:46

states have stopped you, you twenty

20:48

five million people from getting

20:50

the relief you deserve. Now they don't

20:52

deserve it, but that'll be the rhetoric

20:55

of it. So simply having

20:57

the lawsuit exists gives them a talking point

20:59

can say, trying to help you and

21:02

the other side is trying to hurt you.

21:03

But as your point out a while ago, if

21:06

you are not one of the people who

21:09

was in the sort of Biden purchase

21:11

plan, you may well resent the

21:13

whole model. There may be more Americans.

21:15

In fact, I think the only poll I've seen showed

21:18

many more people opposed than

21:20

favored it, and they've sort of figured

21:22

out it's really a bad deal.

21:25

It is a bad deal, And that's why I've said that

21:27

the voting calculation by the Biden administration

21:30

may really backfire because it's

21:32

so expensive, everyone sees

21:34

how unjust it is. And

21:37

besides the fact that it's unlawful, could

21:40

have a lot of implication for

21:42

people voting against the Biden administration

21:45

getting another bite at the apple because

21:48

they see this coming time after time, all

21:50

of this lawlessness agency by agency, and

21:54

it could well be a factor for people's

21:56

decision about whether to come out to vote and then

21:58

how to vote.

22:00

At the same time, it seems to me you've

22:02

got an overlay here.

22:05

Harvard has I think close

22:07

to fifty billion dollars in

22:09

their endowment, and they charge

22:11

very high tuition, So

22:14

you have to wonder, why is the average

22:17

tax player now going to ship money to Harvard.

22:20

You would think that people who were concerned

22:22

about the poor would have had the opposite model. How

22:25

do you get money from Harvard and send it

22:27

to the poor instead? The Biden model

22:29

is how do we raise taxes

22:32

on the poor in order to ship it to Harvard.

22:35

Don't that strike you as like totally backwards?

22:37

It's pretty awful. So elite

22:40

rich universities like Harvard get

22:44

I don't know, billions and billions

22:46

of dollars a year in federal funding and

22:48

subsidy for research as

22:50

well as tuition, and

22:52

they do not need the tuition dollars

22:55

at all, but they get it anyway.

22:57

So what I believe that states

22:59

as well as the federal government should do is

23:02

cut off those subsidies that

23:05

are not needed by rich universities.

23:08

Taxing the endowment is socialism.

23:10

That's wealth confiscation. But you can tax endowment

23:12

income, and you

23:14

can tax the non

23:17

educational part of a university's

23:19

income. Right, So universities

23:22

have meal plans, they have housing plans,

23:24

they get lots of money out of their medical

23:26

work that they do through their hospitals.

23:28

All of that should be taxed. And

23:31

as much as I don't like taxation in

23:33

general, I still think that

23:36

the tax code should be fair across different

23:38

kinds of organizations, and rich

23:41

elite colleges like Harvard have been abusing

23:44

that nonprofit exemption, but they

23:46

really ought to be

23:48

paying I don't want to say their fair share,

23:51

but they ought to be paying what other

23:53

organizations pay.

23:55

When I look around and I realize, you've got

23:57

people at places like Harvard or Yale or Princeton

24:00

who are genuine socialists.

24:03

So they're sitting there happy, they had really

24:05

good jobs and getting paid a lot of money, and

24:08

their model is for everybody else in the country

24:10

to subsidize them. Now,

24:14

I mean, it's a nice gimmick if you can get

24:16

it, but it strikes me it's so profoundly

24:19

intellectually and morally wrong that

24:23

it's kind of amazing that it hasn't been more

24:25

aggressively taken on up to now.

24:28

You know, a few generations ago, we

24:32

culturally put higher education on

24:35

a pedestal. Those were

24:37

the really smart people who were

24:39

discovering things teaching the next generation,

24:42

and we gave them a lot of deference and

24:44

academic freedom, and for the most part, they deserved

24:46

it. But what's happened today,

24:50

especially since October seventh and the

24:52

disastrous response

24:54

to what happened in Israel. We

24:57

see legislators and regulators and the

24:59

general public saying that pedestal

25:02

just really isn't deserved anymore. There

25:04

needs to be some accountability. If faculty

25:06

members are going to be socialists and activists

25:09

instead of scholars, maybe

25:11

it's time for there to be some accountability from the

25:13

public. If they want to

25:16

interfere with our democracy using

25:18

that term, if they want to get involved

25:20

in the democracy and be activists,

25:23

well maybe the rest of us, the democracy will

25:25

start knocking on the gates saying, you're

25:28

responsible to us for all these subsidies. We

25:31

have something to say about what you're doing. If

25:33

they went back to pure academia

25:36

and stop trying to change society and socialize

25:39

it, maybe they wouldn't be seeing

25:41

all of these outsiders coming in and

25:43

saying we don't trust you anymore.

25:45

We did a podcast recently with Open

25:47

the Books, which is a very very

25:49

interesting organization that

25:52

files Freedom of Information Act all over the place,

25:55

actually as a website that lists

25:57

all of these different places,

26:00

and most of our podcast on the University

26:02

of Virginia. Well, when you begin to look at

26:05

the salaries the administrators are being paid.

26:07

I think Stanford now has more administrators

26:11

than there are students, not just teachers,

26:13

and were just pure administrators who have

26:16

nothing to do with the classroom. And all

26:18

of this gets wrapped up in both what they

26:20

charge the student, which Joe Biden

26:22

is trying to pay off on behalf

26:24

of the students, and they

26:26

get it from the government and a whole range of grants.

26:29

And so we're all told that

26:31

we have some moral obligation to

26:34

subsidize people who dislike

26:36

America, despise free

26:39

enterprise, I have contempt for our

26:41

culture. What would like us to pay

26:43

them on subsidize them. It's quite extraordinary

26:45

what they pulled off.

26:47

The main reason that places

26:49

like Stanford or University of Virginia, or

26:52

really almost every college in America

26:55

can dramatically expand its

26:57

administration and have such a large administrative

26:59

bloat is that tuition dollars

27:01

pay for it. Research overhead

27:04

dollars pay for it too at a place like Stanford,

27:07

but that money is

27:09

not going into the classroom. That extra

27:11

tuition dollar is going

27:13

to some assistant dean of DEI

27:16

of diversity, equity and inclusion to

27:18

make trouble for the faculty and

27:20

tell them who they can hire and who they can't hire.

27:23

So if we and it's tough love,

27:25

right, if we cut off the subsidies

27:27

for student loans, then

27:30

we can do something about the administrative bloat

27:32

that Americans are paying for.

27:34

And I think in that sense, when

27:36

went in exactly the wrong direction.

27:38

And not only that, this one point seven

27:41

trillion dollars, it

27:43

is going to still be there because a new

27:45

wave of students will come in year after year

27:47

and have more debt. So what the Biden

27:49

administration is doing is nothing systemically,

27:53

not even as a recommendation to address

27:55

the problem of increasing tuition and

27:57

increasing student debt. Instead, these are

27:59

all very big and expensive band aids

28:02

on a problem that ultimately

28:04

Congress will have to solve.

28:06

I'm delighted that at Heritage

28:09

you're working on this because after

28:11

the election, if we get a Congress

28:13

that's interested in real reform and

28:15

a president this in real reform, you're

28:18

going to turn to places like Heritage for

28:20

specific implementation ideas. So,

28:22

Adam, I think the work you're doing is

28:25

laying the base for a renaissance

28:28

and a much healthier higher education

28:30

program. And I want to thank you for joining

28:32

me, and I want to encourage our listeners

28:35

to visit Heritage dot org, who

28:37

they can read about the Student Loan Debt Forgiveness

28:39

Plan as it is released publicly in the

28:42

next few months. And frankly, I

28:44

work with Heritage all the way back and preparing

28:46

for Reagan, so I know how

28:48

important Heritage is across

28:50

the board on virtually every topic. And

28:53

Adam, you are a great representative of

28:55

that extraordinary institution. Thank

28:57

you so much. It's been a pleasure to be here. Thank

29:05

you to my guest, Adam Kissel. You

29:08

can read more about the Student Loan net Forgiveness

29:10

Plan on our show page at newtsworld

29:12

dot com. Newtworld is produced by

29:15

Gainwick three sixty and iHeartMedia.

29:17

Our executive producer is Guarnsey Sloan.

29:20

Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The

29:22

artwork for the show was created by

29:24

Steve Penley. Special thanks

29:27

to the team at Gingwick three sixty. If

29:29

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29:47

I'm Newt Gingrich. This is Newsworld.