Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown is pushing forward with his proposal to provide a $10,000 payoff to all federal student loan borrowers.
“The next round of stimulus, we want to do that,” Brown told Cheddar from his home in Cleveland, Ohio on Tuesday.
Brown said that he and other Democratic senators have already been partially successful with bringing relief to those burdened by student loan debt.
“Senator Warren and I wanted two major things. We wanted a freeze on payments so nobody had to pay during this six-month or so period,” Brown explained. “We also wanted $10,000 in forgiveness of federal loans. The Republicans wouldn’t accept that. Trump opposed that.”
Brown also lobbied for $4,500 in direct payments for every American adult and child, with restrictions on higher-income families. The $2.2 trillion stimulus package included a one-time payment of $1,200 to most adults and $500 for every child.
When asked about Republicans accusing Democrats of trying to use the coronavirus crisis to push long-sought progressive legislation, Brown shrugged off the criticism saying the government is obligated to take action.
“This is the role of government to help people that are unemployed, to help people that are sick, to help people that are struggling, to help people that are hungry,” he said. “I don’t apologize for a second for any of that.”
Cheddar Politics breaks down the seismic shift in White House rhetoric surrounding Russia's war on Ukraine. President Biden began calling the alleged war crimes committed by Russian soldiers in the Kyiv region "genocide." Foreign policy and national security analyst A. Ari Aramesh joins Cheddar News to discuss what constitutes genocide and whether the developments in Ukraine qualify.
President Joe Biden said he is considering forgiving some federal student debt, a step that would help him fulfill a campaign promise and provide relief to borrowers who took out thousands of dollars in loans to finance their higher education.
Catching you up on what you need to know on April 28, 2022, with Elon Musk mocking Twitter's top legal exec Vijaya Gadde on the platform itself, a probe in George Floyd's death finding discrimination within the Minneapolis police force, the latest California drought leading to new water restrictions, and more.
Tech giant Microsoft won a military contract for the production of its IVAS (integrated visual augmentation system) combat goggles, based on its HoloLens ARG tech, worth up to $21.9 billion over 10 years. However, the Pentagon is now saying that the device "has not yet demonstrated the capability to serve as a fighting goggle," and that the Army made mistakes in the program's initial stages by not clearly describing minimum performance standards. While testing continues, concerns have grown outside of the Defense Department to Congress and even within Microsoft itself. Cheddar's Ken Buffa takes a deeper look at the possible boondoggle.
U.S. stocks fell sharply to close Tuesday's session, with the Nasdaq dropping 3.95% and hitting a new one-year low. Frances Newton Stacy, Director of Strategy for Optimal Capital, joins Cheddar News to discuss her reaction to how markets closed the session, and to break down Q3 2022 earnings from Microsoft. "Netflix was sort of the big warning, and I think Big Tech was down today in anticipation of these earnings," she says.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has signed into law a bill that strips Disney World of its special self-governing status. This came after Disney spoke out against Florida's so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, some saying in retaliation of that. Ben Means, Professor of Law and the John T. Campbell Chair in Business and Professional Ethics at the University of South Carolina School of Law, breaks down how the new law might impact Disney’s business moving forward.
Catching you up on what you need to know on April 27, 2022, with Tesla stocks absorbing an initial hit following Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter, Russia pausing its natural gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria, NASA's SpaceX Crew-4 mission taking off, and more.
Russia and the United States have exchanged prisoners. Russia released a Marine veteran jailed in Moscow while the U.S. released a convicted Russian drug trafficker serving a prison sentence in Connecticut.
