Elizabeth Warren: In Their Vote Against Student Loan Reform, the GOP Has Sided With the Billionaires

Elizabeth Warren: In Their Vote Against Student Loan Reform, the GOP Has Sided With the Billionaires

Elizabeth Warren: In Their Vote Against Student Loan Reform, the GOP Has Sided With the Billionaires

That’s why Warren will be campaigning for Mitch McConnell’s opponent in this fall’s election.

Facebook
Twitter
Email
Flipboard
Pocket

On Wednesday morning, House minority leader Mitch McConnell and other Republican representatives successfully blocked Elizabeth Warren’s student loan bill—a piece of legislation that would have allowed the millions of Americans saddled with student loan debts to refinance them at a lower interest rate. McConnell referred to the bill as a “tax increase bill styled as a student loan bill,” and encouraged Republicans to filibuster to stop it. fifty-eight senators, three of them Republicans, voted for the bill, while only thirty-eight voted against it, but it was still not enough to overcome the filibuster.

An outraged Elizabeth Warren told Chris Hayes last night that the choice should have been simple. “Do you stand with the billionaires, protecting every single tax break that they get? Every loophole, every subsidy? Or do you stand with the students? The people who went out there, played by the rules and tried to get an education and are trying to start their lives,” she demanded.

Now, McConnell better watch his seat: Warren says she’ll be going to Kentucky to campaign for Alison Lundergan Grimes, McConnell’s Democratic opponent in this fall’s election, who Warren said has been in favor of the student loan bill and would be likely to bring about the positive change that McConnell is trying to resist.

—Hannah Harris Green

We cannot back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.

Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.

Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

I urge you to stand with The Nation and donate today.

Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

Ad Policy
x