Former Democratic senator from Missouri and MSNBC analyst Claire McCaskill expressed doubts on Friday over whether President Biden’s student loan handout policy was good idea.
Talking to MSNBC’s Morning Joe co-host Willie Geist, McCaskill said she’s "not sure" that Biden’s plan to absolve $10,000 of federal student loan debt for each borrower making under $125,000 "works."
McCaskill also mentioned that the abortion issue might generate stronger young voter turnout than Biden’s loan handout in the upcoming midterm elections.
Geist began the discussion by mentioning Democratic lawmakers who have disagreed with the loan policy. He specifically named Congressman Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, who he claimed is running for Senate in "what’s become a red state in Ohio," and added that "he does not support this policy, trying to win statewide."
BIDEN STUDENT LOAN HANDOUT COULD ELIMINATE SCHUMER-MANCHIN LAW DEFICIT REDUCTION
Ryan put out a recent statement slamming Biden’s student loan handout for sending "the wrong message to the millions without a degree working just as hard to make ends meet."
Geist posed the hypothetical questions to McCaskill to answer as if she was running for office in Missouri currently. "I’m thinking about you running in somewhere like Missouri, if this issue had come up there. Obviously, there are moral questions around it. Is it fair? There are legal questions around it. Does the president have the power to do this?," he asked, while acknowledging there are also "Economic questions about inflation" relevant to the policy.
McCaskill began her answer with a slam on college tuition. She claimed, "The increase in college tuition has been obscene in this country over the last 10, 20 years. I mean, what used to be reasonable for every American in terms of attaining a higher education has become completely unattainable."
Though she acknowledged the dire situation of paying for college today, McCaskill couldn’t profess a strong belief in Biden’s solution. "And I’m not sure Biden’s policy works here," she admitted.
McCaskill also had doubts whether Biden could court young, college-age voters with his loan forgiveness policy, though she admitted she thinks it’s worth a try getting them on board considering support for Biden among young Democrats is practically non-existent.
According to a New York Times/Siena College poll from July, "just 1 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds strongly approve of the way Mr. Biden is handling his job. And 94 percent of Democrats under 30 said they wanted another candidate to run two years from now."
McCaskill explained, "the other big question about this decision, while I don’t disagree with the decision he’s made about this, is will it really have the impact they’re hoping for with younger voters?"
McCaskill implied that Biden’s efforts might be better spent elsewhere, "because younger people historically have been terrible about turning out to vote, especially in the midterms."
"So will this forgiveness of college debt actually have the impact they’re hoping for? Will younger voters all of a sudden go, ‘Oh, my gosh, now I got to really focus on these elections and getting out to vote?’ It will be interesting to see," she stated.
Though the analyst opined that the "Dobbs decision is gonna do more to get people out to vote – the Roe v. Wade being dismantled, the really extreme laws beings being proposed against women in all of these states on that topic – that’ll be more of a motivator than, unfortunately, than what the president did around college debt."
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