8 in 10 Young People Want Government Action On Student Loan Debt
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.5 • 24.9K Ratings
🗓️ 25 April 2022
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For years, an Education Department loan program has failed to live up to the promises it made to students — the department is now promising to make amends.
This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional correspondent Susan Davis, and education correspondent Cory Turner.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is Megan in Hood River, Oregon, and I am currently celebrating my first day as a married couple with my wife, Paige. |
| 0:06.4 | This podcast was recorded at 2.09pm on Monday, the 25th of April. |
| 0:12.4 | Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but we'll be celebrating and soaking up the sun in Hawaii. Enjoy the show! |
| 0:21.0 | Nice! |
| 0:22.0 | Congratulations! |
| 0:23.6 | I'm always amazed at the people who listen to our podcast who have these great, big, momentous, wonderful, personal life events, and one of their first thoughts is like, I got a set at a time stamp. |
| 0:33.6 | I mean, what is married life? Is it different? Well, yeah, I got a time stamp on the NPR Politics podcast. |
| 0:39.6 | Hey there, it is the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Tamer Keith, I cover the White House. Susan Davis, I cover Congress. |
| 0:47.6 | And Cory Turner is here from NPR's Education team. Hey, Cory. |
| 0:52.6 | Hey! |
| 0:53.6 | Welcome back on the pod. And Cory, we have you here because we want to talk about student loan debt. |
| 1:00.6 | And also, the politics of it. President Biden has lost considerable support among young people. |
| 1:06.6 | He's down 18 percentage points from a year ago, according to a new poll from the Harvard Institute of Politics. |
| 1:13.6 | One in three young people, that is, people under 30, believe that political involvement rarely has tangible results. |
| 1:21.6 | Four in 10 say their vote doesn't make a difference. And one big issue on their minds is student loan debt. |
| 1:28.6 | 85% of young Americans favor some form of government action on student loan debt. Cory, you cover this issue inside and out. |
| 1:37.6 | And this is a thing that President Biden promised on the campaign trail. $10,000 of student loan forgiveness. |
| 1:45.6 | And it hasn't come to pass. How many people would be affected by a move like that? Or is it all pretty academic right now? Because it's just not going to happen. |
| 1:55.6 | Well, you know, it's funny, Tam. I was looking around because I knew you wanted an answer to this question. |
| 2:01.6 | So I was trying to find something approximating an answer. And it turns out a couple of researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York put something together in just the last few days. |
| 2:14.6 | And it's really fascinating. So they looked at this $10,000 pledge of Biden's, which, you know, on the trail, he usually when he said it, he said, hopefully Congress will act. |
| 2:26.6 | And it's pretty clear at this point that Congress is not going to act, which is why so many people are waiting for him to do something. |
... |
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