Republicans continued their 40-year war on education with their criticism of Joe Biden’s decision to wipe out as much as $20,000 in student loan debt for low-income former college students and $10,000 for middle-class ex-students.
The Republican National Committee called the debt relief a “bailout for the wealthy. As hardworking Americans struggle with soaring costs and a recession, Biden is giving a handout to the rich.”
In fact, the $10,000 relief is limited to people who earn less than $125,000 annually (which isn’t as rich as it used to be), and the $20,000 relief is for those who had qualified for Pell grants because of their low family income.
As Thom Hartmann notes in his article on page 9, US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted that student loan forgiveness was “completely unfair.” She’s the same Republican congresswoman who had $183,504 in Paycheck Protection Program loans forgiven, and happily banked the money without complaint or regret.
Responding to a GOP tweet whining that “If you take out a loan, you pay it back, ” the Center for American Progress listed several Republican members of Congress who had criticized the student loan relief, along with the amount of PPP loans forgiven.
Texas universities used to have among the cheapest tuition rates in the US, charging $100 a year at the University of Texas and Texas A&M in the 1970s. Today, it costs $11,448. With housing, books and other living expenses, the average expense for a Texas resident is $28,928 a year, or $115,712 for students graduating in four years, CollegeCalc,org reports. That would require a monthly payment of $1,156 for 10 years to pay off a Stafford federal loan, which has a 3.73% interest rate. (Some debtors report they are struggling with loans carrying 10% interest rates.)
A $1,156 monthly loan payment might be a heavy lift for a new Texas teacher, whose average starting salary is $40,977, or $3,414 a month. (The average rent in Texas was $685 for a one-bedroom apartment, according to RentData.org, but it’s more like $1,014 in the Houston metro area, $1,150 in Dallas MSA and $1,236 in Austin MSA.)
Teachers may qualify for the federal Teacher Loan Forgiveness Program, which forgives $17,500 of loans after five years of full-time teaching. But that still leaves a Texas teacher paying off nearly $100,000 in debt. Public service employees may qualify for loan forgiveness after they have made 120 months of qualifying payments.
Republicans in 2017 gave an actual handout to the rich, when on a party-line vote they approved a $2 trillion tax break for billionaires and corporations. Democrats should reduce college costs at the state level and increase grants in aid at the state and federal level to cover education costs (as well as vocational training) so anybody who can make the grade can attend a state university or community college.
Stand Up for Ukraine
Peace activists in the US call for a diplomatic solution to the nearly seven-month war in Ukraine, but we will have to excuse Ukrainians if they have little confidence in promises made by Russians.
“The White House and Congress are fueling this war with a steady stream of weapons instead of pushing for talks to end the conflict,” Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the peace group CodePink, said in a statement Sept. 8. “That’s why we, the people, have to rise up with a demand of negotiations, not escalation …
“Rather than push for a protracted war, the White House and Congress should support a diplomatic solution along the lines of the MINSK II Peace Accord, signed by both Ukraine and Russia in 2015, to declare Ukraine a neutral non-NATO country and hold elections in the eastern region of Ukraine,” CodePink said.
“Instead the US government has budgeted $40 billion to escalate the war with weapons, military equipment, troop training, and intelligence, with zero accountability or oversight for taxpayer dollars,” the group added. “The same amount of money could have paid for 350,000 nurses or 400,000 elementary school teachers.”
We have a great deal of respect for Medea Benjamin and CodePink, but the United States can afford to pay for nurses and schoolteachers and also help Ukraine defend its independence from Russia. We owe Ukraine for its role in reducing nuclear proliferation in Europe.
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the former Soviet Republic of Ukraine gained independence, but US officials were concerned that Ukraine inherited the third-largest nuclear arsenal in the world, with 1,900 strategic nuclear weapons designed to strike the US.
In negotiations in Budapest with Russian and US officials in December 1994, Ukraine agreed to eliminate the missiles, silos and bombers on its territory, signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and transferred the nuclear warheads to Russia for disassembly.
In return, the US, Russia and Britain provided security assurances to Ukraine. The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances committed Washington, Moscow and London, among other things, to “respect the independence and sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine” and to “refrain from the threat or use of force” against that country.
Russian President Boris Yeltsin agreed to respect Ukraine’s independence, but since Vladimir Putin has taken over in the Kremlin, he has broken virtually all those commitments. In a 2005 Kremlin speech, Putin characterized the collapse of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the Twentieth Century” and he appears to be intent on putting the empire back together.
Putin complained that NATO has added former Warsaw Pact nations, including former Soviet Republics Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, since the breakup, but Putin’s erratic actions have validated his neighbors’ concerns. In his 23 years in power as prime minister or president, he launched a war in Chechnya in 1999, sent Russian forces into Georgia in 2008, seized Crimea in 2014, and provided arms to separatists in eastern Ukraine, fueling a war that claimed some 14,000 lives by February 2022.
As Russia mobilized 190,000 troops on Ukraine’s border, Putin reneged on Yeltsin’s recognition of Ukraine’s right to statehood and insisted Ukraine was still part of Russia in a Feb. 21 speech. He also recognized the breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine.
Two days later, Putin announced a “special military operation” was needed to “demilitarize and denazify” Ukraine. Russian armored forces rolled into Ukraine on Feb. 24, expecting to take Kyiv in three days. But with arms and intelligence support from the United States and other NATO members, Ukraine put up a much tougher resistance than Russian generals expected. The “three-day war” has lasted more than six months, and Ukraine forces are engaged in a counteroffensive in the east and hope not only push Russia out of the Donbas region, but also to reclaim Crimea.
Meanwhile, Putin’s military ambition has persuaded Finland and Sweden to join NATO.
The Budapest Memorandum is not a treaty, but there is a moral commitment for its signatories to protect Ukraine’s sovereignty. If that can be done by providing Ukraine with armaments to defend its territories against Russian invaders, Ukraine will carry on the fight, without US troops getting in the line of fire.
As much as you may distrust the US military-industrial complex, Joe Biden and Congress should give Ukraine what it needs, and hope Russian generals convince Putin to withdraw from Ukraine. — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, October 1, 2022
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