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.

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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

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