Pelosi to Cheddar: GOP Has Saddled Millennials with 'Unconscionable' Debt
*By Carlo Versano*
Young Americans face a double burden from crushing student debt and the ballooned federal deficit that resulted from President Trump's tax cut, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Cheddar's J.D. Durkin in an interview that aired Wednesday.
Pelosi called the economic position many millennials find themselves in, even as the economy remains strong, "unconscionable."
"Republicans foisted onto future generations \[an\] economy that is unfair, that is not really lending itself to growth in a strong, predictable, confident, certain way," Pelosi said.
Democrats have already begun making the case to young voters that they are the party of fairness. Pelosi pointed to encouraging millennial turnout in the midterm elections and said that H.R. 1, a sweeping anti-corruption and voting rights bill that's currently in committee, is among her top legislative priorities. That bill is getting "tremendous response" from young voters who want to see more transparency around so-called "dark money" in elections and know that their vote matters, Pelosi said.
That bill also includes provisions that would create automatic nationwide voter registration and crack down on gerrymandering. Conservative lobbyists have [called](http://conservativeactionproject.com/conservatives-oppose-h-r-1-the-ultimate-fantasy-of-the-left/) it "the ultimate fantasy of the left," and the GOP opposition means it has virtually no chance of becoming law while Republicans control the Senate and White House.
Nevertheless, Pelosi sees that type of legislation as key to attracting broad millennial support in 2020.
"That's hard to break down the skepticism that is there, but we're on a path to do it," she said.
While President Trump and the GOP will likely run on a message of tax cuts and economic prosperity, Pelosi seems to believe they are vulnerable on the fairness message.
"Eighty-three percent of the benefits of their tax bill went to the top 1 percent," Pelosi said. " I think that it's important to note that we want an economy that works for you... not for the top, the wealthiest people in our country."
On the burden of student debt, Pelosi said she recognized that it weighed on millennials "like an anvil" as they begin their professional lives, and makes everything harder ー from getting married to starting a business. She did not mention to Cheddar any specific actions Democrats in Congress will take with regard to student debt relief, though she noted that a now-expired provision of Obamacare was built to expand funding of community colleges and Pell grants and mitigate interest rates. "We have to go back to that," she said.
With a temporary break in the impasse over border wall funding heading toward a Feb. 15 appropriations deadline, Pelosi didn't show her cards on how House Democrats are negotiating to ensure the government isn't shut down again.
"I think that the shutdown was a bitter pill for some of the Republicans to swallow and they might like to avoid that," she said.
State and county taxpayers will be asked to commit a record $850 million in public funds toward construction of the Buffalo Bills’ new stadium as part of a 30-year lease agreement.
As the war enters its second month, Russia may be changing course on its strategy in Ukraine. After suffering heavy losses, forces around the capital city of Kyiv appear to have stopped offensive operations and are now shifting their focus to taking over the south and east of the country. Terrell Starr, a foreign affairs reporter at The Atlantic Council, breaks down the latest from Kyiv. "Logistically this war has been a disaster. They have far more troops than [the] Ukrainian army has. What they don't have is good planning. The planning has been incredibly poor," he said.
Catching you up on what you Need to Know on Mar 28, 2022, with peace talks resuming in Ukraine as early as today, Colorado wildfires causing evacuations, Shanghai, China, ramping up restrictions once again, the Oscars debacle between Will Smith and Chris Rock, and more.
Volatility continues to be the name of the game when it comes to crypto. Bitcoin, the most valuable digital token, saw a small jump today - one of several small rallies throughout the month of March. Caitlin Cook, vice president of crypto education company Onramp Academy, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
As of March 2022, almost 200 Anti-LGBT+ bills have been introduced in state governments across the country — especially directed at the transgender community. Human Rights Campaign State Legislative Director and Senior Counsel Cathryn Oakley joined Cheddar News to discuss the deluge of legislation. "Unfortunately we are seeing these bills come at transgender youth from every conceivable direction," she said. "Every support that a trans kid has, whether that's their parents, whether that's their family, whether that's their teachers or their guidance counselors or their coaches, whether it's their teammates or the librarians and the books that they read, whether it's curriculum, whether it's even just the ability to acknowledge that LGBTQ people have existed throughout history and are important in the fabric of modern American society. The bills that we are seeing filed across the country are targeting all of those pieces."
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week seemed to have put out a video that urged Ukrainians to put down their arms and surrender to Russia. It was later revealed that it was a “deepfake,” a computer-generated video to mimic the Ukrainian leader. Cheddar News speaks with security expert Morgan Wright about how the technology is being used in the war in Ukraine.
