Amid the fight and negotiations over the debt ceiling, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell teamed up with socialist Rep. Maxwell Frost to lament that Republicans are seeking to cut spending, specifically President Biden’s student loan forgiveness order.
Mitchell began by ruefully reporting, “the House voted Wednesday to overturn the president's plan to cancel billions of dollars in student loan debt.” After referencing the Supreme Court case on the matter, she asked “Is there a larger issue at play here? And how does it affect, well, generations of students carrying a lot of debt for years and years?”
Frost replied by going on a long bender about how awful it is not just that student loan debt. In attempt to win the sympathy of unsympathetic opponents, he argued, “I want to speak directly to folks who say it's not fair. I agree. It isn't fair. It's not fair that people have this debt in the first place. It's not fair that the people who already paid their debt had that in the first place too, but the way government works is we look at an injustice and we work to remedy it.”
He then reached for a truly hideous analogy, “just because others didn't have it remedied, you know, prior to that doesn't mean we don't move forward. That kind of logic would mean that black people, women wouldn't be able to vote now just because folks before them weren't able to vote and that's not how we should think here and so I'm for student debt forgiveness.”
Mitchell did not call him out on the preposterous idea that paying back a loan that you willing took out is anywhere near the same thing as being denied the vote based off race or sex.
Instead, she turned to the debt limit itself and worried the White House’s PR operation is not up to the task, “And finally about the debt ceiling, we see McCarthy, Speaker McCarthy out there and other people from the Freedom Caucus. We have not seen that much from the president or the cabinet secretaries. Do you think they're doing enough to sell their arguments, sell their side of the case?”
For his part, Frost claimed Biden “has done a lot” but also urged him to “use his bully pulpit” to call out Republicans for having “manufactured a bomb” that will blow up on “working families.”
This segment was sponsored by Subway.
Here is a transcript for the May 25 show:
MSNBC Andrea Mitchell Reports
5/25/2023
12:27 PM ET
ANDREA MITCHELL: And the House voted Wednesday to overturn the president's plan to cancel billions of dollars in student loan debt. We expect the Supreme Court is going to weigh in at some point. Is there a larger issue at play here? And how does it affect, well, generations of students carrying a lot of debt for years and years?
MAXWELL FROST: It does, it impacts many people and a lot of times when folks think about student debt forgiveness and they hear the word "student," they think it just impacts young people, but the fact of the matter is there are people -- older folks, people across the entire spectrum of demographics that are impacted by this and who need the relief and I want to speak directly to folks who say it's not fair. I agree. It isn't fair. It's not fair that people have this debt in the first place. It's not fair that the people who already paid their debt had that in the first place too, but the way government works is we look at an injustice and we work to remedy it.
And just because others didn't have it remedied, you know, prior to that doesn't mean we don't move forward. That kind of logic would mean that black people, women wouldn't be able to vote now just because folks before them weren't able to vote and that's not how we should think here and so I'm for student debt forgiveness. I’m with the president on this and we’re waiting to see what happens in the Supreme Court.
MITCHELL: And finally about the debt ceiling, we see McCarthy, Speaker McCarthy out there and other people from the Freedom Caucus. We have not seen that much from the president or the cabinet secretaries. Do you think they're doing enough to sell their arguments, sell their side of the case?
FROST: I think the president has done a lot. I do think the president should use his bully pulpit to really call out these Republicans and tell the nation what's going on in the Oval Office or in the Rose Garden, primetime address and really telling the American people what the GOP has decided to do.
They have manufactured a bomb, you know, this whole debt ceiling crisis, and they're saying, “hey, unless you allow us to pass massive cuts to working class families, guess what, we're going to hit the trigger” and in fact, there are many members of the GOP caucus who are maybe kind of interested in hitting the trigger. Maybe they’re a little curious to see what happens if our country defaults, but what we know to be true is that working families will suffer. People won't get Social Security checks, Medicaid, Medicaid [sic], veterans will be impacted and so we need to do what's right and raise the debt ceiling and move on from this.
