2019-2021 Town Halls: on Education
Joe Biden:
Write off $10,000 in student debt, not $50,000
Q: We need student loan forgiveness beyond the potential $10,000 your administration has proposed. We need at least a $50,000 minimum. What will you do to make that happen?BIDEN: I will not make that happen.
I do think that, in this moment of economic pain and strain, that we should be eliminating interest on the debts that are accumulated, number one. And, number two, I'm prepared to write off the $10,000 debt, but not $50,000.
Source: CNN Presidential Town Hall 2021 with Biden & Anderson Cooper
Feb 16, 2021
Joe Biden:
$100B for school ventilation; part of $1T for infrastructure
Q: How you will make sure our communities are protected from the results of global warming? BIDEN: I have laid out in detail what I'll do, and I'm going to see to it that I said we get to a net zero power grid by 2035.
No president can [instantly] turn around and change what we're doing. We're going to get to net zero emissions by the year 2050 before. In the meantime, there's so much we can do and still make it better for people.
We're going to invest in close to a trillion dollars over time in the near time for infrastructure. We're going to build green infrastructure. For example, I propose that we spend $100 billion on making sure our schools have the right the right
ventilation, [to ensure that] your schools, in fact, are safe. Making sure schools are in a position where they are not generating the use of more energy. We're going to build back buildings that vastly cut down on the amount of fossil fuels that we use.
Source: CNN Town Hall 2020 drive-in with Anderson Cooper
Sep 17, 2020
Tom Steyer:
Deal with student debt by subsidizing interest rate
I believe that a college education has to be affordable for everybody. Forty-four million people have student debt, and half of them have delayed getting married or having a kid because of it. One of the biggest issues with student loans is
people start with $25,000 or $30,000 of debt and they end up paying off $80,000 to $100,000 in debt. What I'm saying is, we subsidize the interest rate. Every dollar you pay goes to reduce the principal. So if you have $25,000, you pay down $25,000.
Source: CNN Town Hall 2020 with Chris Cuomo
Feb 24, 2020
Pete Buttigieg:
Schoolchildren shouldn't have to have active shooter drills
Q: What is your plan for remedying the terror that has become embedded in our schools?BUTTIGIEG: I'm thinking about terms like dispersion of targets and the difference between cover and concealment that are things that I learned as part of military
training. To see what we are accepting in terms of the expectation that this is just normal, that kids are going to have active shooter drills, sometimes before they're old enough to learn how to read, shows you that this country has its priorities
wrong.
You look at something like universal background checks. This is something that 80 or 90% support in America and we still can't get it through Washington. It shows you what has to change in our political system.
This should not be your problem, and it certainly shouldn't be the problem of the children that you serve.
Source: CNN Town Hall 2020 with Erin Burnett
Feb 18, 2020
Pete Buttigieg:
Triple Title I funding; create Education Access Corps
I'm proposing that we triple the funds going into Title I in particular. Those are dollars that go into low-income districts, which is where having a great teacher is especially impactful. I'm proposing that we create an Education Access Corps to link
up high-quality teaching programs across the country. If you participate in them, and then commit to teaching in one of those Title I programs, you have a portable teaching license you could take anywhere, and you get your student loans forgiven.
Source: CNN Town Hall 2020 with Erin Burnett
Feb 18, 2020
Andrew Yang:
Giving families money will improve educational outcomes
When you look at the data, you find that two-thirds of kids' educational outcomes are based on non-school factors, like parental income, parental time spent with them at home, stress levels in the household. So if you put money into that family, you
would be enhancing that child's ability to learn. Social goals often are related to economic goals, where if you put more money into family's hands, you can do things like improve graduation rates, improve mental health, decrease domestic violence.
Source: CNN Town Hall 2020: Presidential/NYC Mayoral race
Feb 5, 2020
Elizabeth Warren:
Secretary of Ed should enforce civil rights and value all
Q: What do you think schools need to do better to make sure that I don't have to worry about anything but my homework?
WARREN: I want to have a secretary of education who believes in public education and believes in the value of every one of our kids and is willing to enforce our civil rights laws.
Source: CNN LGBT Town Hall 2020
Oct 10, 2019
Amy Klobuchar:
Address student debt in ways beyond free college
The first thing I would do is allow students and no matter how old they are, former students to refinance their student loans at that rate that's a little above 3 percent we could even go lower to find some even better rate than that.
But that's what I think we need to do to bring the interest rate payments down for those Americans that still have the student loans.
The second thing I would do is expand Pell Grant and make it easier for people to use Pell Grant. Those aren't loans, those are grants.
Depending on your income level to make that easier as well as the amount of money that you get. The third thing I do is bring back President Obama's plan for free community college.
Source: CNN Town Hall 2020: 5 candidates back-to-back
Apr 22, 2019
Amy Klobuchar:
Loan forgiveness for those taking public service jobs
People that go into those careers that's loan forgiveness. I strongly support that. I think we can do also expand that into in-demand jobs.
I would target the loan forgiveness at those that -- for instance, I brought up people that went into public service, in demand locations and in demand jobs that we have in our economy.
Source: CNN Town Hall 2020: 5 candidates back-to-back
Apr 22, 2019
Elizabeth Warren:
Roll back student debt; free college going forward
I have two parts to [my college debt] proposal. Part one is that we say that we're going to roll back student loan debt for about 95% of students who have debt. And part two is to make sure that we never get in this mess again is to make college
universally available with free tuition and fees, and to put more money into Pell grants so that students of color & our poorest students have real access to college and that we put real money into our historically black colleges and universities.
Source: CNN Town Hall 2020: 5 candidates back-to-back
Apr 22, 2019
Kamala Harris:
Change rules on student debt: reduce interest, income based
I do support debt-free college. I also believe that what we need to do is we need to allow students to refinance your student loan debt. If you took out student loans between the years of about 2006 through 2013, the interest rate was about 7 percent.
What I am proposing is, regardless of the interest rate at the time, repayment would have to be at 3.5 percent. I would require that there be a robust process by which income-based repayment would be the norm.
Source: CNN Town Hall 2020: 5 candidates back-to-back
Apr 22, 2019
Pete Buttigieg:
States should take on more of cost of higher education
This is kind of a personal issue for us because Chasten and I live with six-figure student debt. There are several things that we've got to do. Through a combination of carrots and sticks, we've got to induce states to carry more of the burden,
instead of continuing to pass it on to students. Students are getting squeezed because states are less and less willing to appropriate the funds to make sure that in-state public college tuition is truly affordable.
We've also got to work on student loan debt. If, when interest rates change, I can refinance the debt on our house, then it stands to reason that you should be able to do with student debt, too.
I think those two steps, coupled with a significant
increase in Pell Grants, would make a big difference for college accessibility. And when we're increasing Pell Grants, let's peg it automatically to inflation.
Source: CNN Town Hall 2020 Democratic primary
Apr 22, 2019
Pete Buttigieg:
Supports loan forgiveness but not across the board
Q: Would you support student loan cancellation, say, to households earning less than $200,000? A: I still want to do some math around it. I find it pretty appealing. I'm not as certain that I'm comfortable with people of that high an income
participating until we have completed the transition to a more progressive tax code, because if you're north of $200,000, maybe you're at the point where we could ask you to take care of that on yourself. But the theory of it makes a lot of sense.
Source: CNN Town Hall 2020 Democratic primary
Apr 22, 2019
Marianne Williamson:
Wipe out college loans burdening the young
You can't be all that you can be when you're so weighed down. How am I going to pay these college loans? This is where our economic good comes from. Economic good does not come from a few major corporate moguls who just drop some
crumbs off the table when they're in the mood to. Our economic good comes from the fact that each and every one of us are able to actualize the extraordinary, unlimited, God-given potential. That's why I want to take these college loan debts away.
Source: CNN Town Hall 2020 Democratic primary
Apr 14, 2019
Page last updated: Apr 07, 2021