You said it was a solution to a problem that doesn't exist? Student loan debt for the middle class isn't a problem? - - - Updated - - - You're incorrigible. Thanks for participating anyway.
I'd agree with that - it just has to be public job training. The private technical schools are getting away with murder. They take peoples' money regardless of how few jobs there are.
Yes, that is what it says: "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;" Collect taxes to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.
I'm reading it the way James Madison, otherwise known as the Father of the Constitution, read it: "If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress.... Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America." -- James Madison, Letter to Edmund Pendleton, 1792
No, two years worth of community college tuition is not a problem for the middle class. What is that? About $5-6,000 in low interest loans in exchange for an education and marketable skills/experience? That's not a problem; that's a bargain.
Yes, I am reading it the same way as Madison. The power to tax TO provide for the general welfare, not the power to tax AND provide for the general welfare. Some, who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation, have grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on the language in which it is defined. It has been urged and echoed, that the power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States," amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction. Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases. A power to destroy the freedom of the press, the trial by jury, or even to regulate the course of descents, or the forms of conveyances, must be very singularly expressed by the terms "to raise money for the general welfare." But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon? If the different parts of the same instrument ought to be so expounded, as to give meaning to every part which will bear it, shall one part of the same sentence be excluded altogether from a share in the meaning; and shall the more doubtful and indefinite terms be retained in their full extent, and the clear and precise expressions be denied any signification whatsoever? For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity, which, as we are reduced to the dilemma of charging either on the authors of the objection or on the authors of the Constitution, we must take the liberty of supposing, had not its origin with the latter. -- Madison, Federalist #41
Yes and no. Yes, because for those going on to four year and graduate school, they will incur student loan debt? Starting out at the university with no debt is better than starting $15,000 in debt. No, because grants are already available to lower income students.
It's their parents' income that is used to determine eligibility for grants. What is the median household income these days? What's the average number of kids? How much is the average American saving? How much is the average American in debt? We can do the personal responsibility platitudes all day, but the fact is the middle class is strapped!
So what? I didn't mention anything about grants. Don't know. Why don't you run out and find those answers and report back to us since you're the one who finds them to be significant. Oh, please! A $5000 loan that can be deferred nearly until the end of time and that can have payments thinned and stretched out over a decade or more is hardly a burden worth all of this wailing. It simply means that little Todd will have to use a portion of the income that he earns above and beyond what he would have sans education to pay off the small loan. Middle class kids aren't going into the poor house over community college loans. Furthermore, did you think that the "free tuition" is going to materialize out of thin air? That middle class whom you describe as "strapped" is going to be footing the bill. So, I guess they can't afford to send their own kids to community college but they can afford to send other kids to community college? Is that the argument?
I can afford a few bucks a year easier than I can afford several thousand. So, yes, we can more easily afford it if it's paid by the collective than individually. I'm a conservative, so spare me the free in quotes and other simple minded platitudes. I'm more interested in the practicality of it than the ideological arguments the two-party system has conditioned us to debate.
Of course you can better afford it...that's because you would be forcing other people to pay for something that you want. That seems to be the new American way. Oh, and you can save the platitudes about what the two party system has conditioned "us" to do. I belong to neither and denounce both.
