WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Sam Raus: Can Trump Fix the Student Loan Crisis? Conservatives Need a Plan

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

With $1.7 trillion in student debt burdening 42 million Americans, conservatives must move beyond rhetoric and offer market-friendly solutions that align with fiscal principles.Sam Raus—a nationally-published political analyst and trained PR professional, and a Young Voices Contributor—argues in his latest op-ed that targeted tax strategies and pragmatic reforms can address student debt without the overreach of progressive proposals. He joins WRFH to discuss.From 02/12/25.

Hello and welcome to Radio Free Hillsdale. This is Malia Tibido with my guest, Sam Rouse, a young voices contributor and fellow who has just published an article titled, Will Trump Fix Student Loan Crisis? Conservatives should address mounting debt in USA today. Hi, Sam. How's it going today? Good. Thank you so much for having me on. Yeah, no problem. We would just like to start with an overview of like, what? What inspired you to write about economics and what inspired you to write about these policies? Yeah, absolutely. So I've really been taking a deep dive into both our financial and tech sector and gotten really close to different cases with antitrust law, cases with regulation. But it has started to realize that some of the bigger economic concerns on people's everyday deal book is, that a lot of people in the United States right now are paying very high prices and are struggling

with a number of different costs, including student loan debt, housing costs, et cetera. And so I wanted to dig into one of these issues, which is the one that I experienced most often currently as a recent college graduate, which is making your student loan payment. And over the past four years, we've had an administration that sold my generation, our generation, a big lie, and that was that somehow magically student debt was going to be cancelled, absolved, just not existent. And, well, not only did that get blocked by the United States Supreme Court, but that administration is no longer in power.

And now it comes time for there to be an actual discussion about this issue and actual considerations of policy, not of executive actions. And that's why I really felt like this was something that we need to dive into. early on in the Trump administration. I get that. And with this new administration comes a different perspective on these things. You did mention that Biden and his administration attempted to have a few actions. Could you go through that and how that failed? Because you said it was a lot of executive action.

Yeah, you're right. So what was the biggest standout was that the Biden White House acted all through executive power on this domain, both through executive order signed by the president and by different administrative choices by some of his cabinet members. There was never any legislation being passed in this wheelhouse. And at first, the reforms really targeted at holding predatory loan providers or for-profit colleges accountable for the financial impacts that they had had on people. particularly people that had been defrauded or inaccurately charged.

And I think some of that ultimately held up in the courts when challenged because it fell under different existing statutes on fraud and abuse by businesses more broadly. But then the Biden administration tried to go further and further and determine different subsets of populations loan, whether that was public employees, military veterans, certain. class of people and try to begin canceling or forgiving their loans through unappropriated federal dollars acting through some of these different mystical emergency powers that the president can have. And those ultimately all got blocked by the Supreme Court and found to be not within the constitutional scope of the presidency, certainly not possible given the fact that. that the funds were not appropriated for that purpose.

And so now we sit at a point in which there really has been no enacted policies besides some fraud changes in this wheelhouse. Right. A source cited in your article mentioned that student loan relief is low priority for those on Capitol Hill and the sitting president. This was during the Biden administration. And then later on in your article, you mentioned how this is. is the same with Republicans in that they tend to have the mindset of go to community college or just work harder.

How do you think that has affected the initiatives to help with student loan relief and the actions that should be taken? Yeah, absolutely. And that was one of the bigger underlying concerns I had as I started writing the entire piece is, you know, we hear so much in other policy domains, you know, particularly. in the economy of the right being people who see things like they are and just look at the data, look at the reality that people are facing and address those things. And I think when it comes to the costs of consumer goods or the cost of housing, we're having a lot of awakening about the reality of, you know, prices and construction and stuff. Yet when it comes to this student debt situation, because it was so politicized by the Biden administration, and it became such a campaign tactic for people particularly on the far left, the reaction to people that are a bit more fiscally minded on the right has been more of a value judgment and a culture war fight over whether or not people are going to colleges to study the right things or whether that actually equates to value in their career.

And it is completely missing the bark in the reality is that we have large, swaths of the population that are still not attending college. One would think that it's like almost everyone. It's, I think, just barely a majority of the population even goes to college. And by and large, those people study things either in, you know, the business communication sector or in different more technical fields. The study of some maybe abstract humanities that we might see is out of line with like a conservative of worldview is a pretty minuscule population.

And frankly, when it comes to financial policy, it's not something to be discriminatory on the basis of we should look at this as a financial problem with regards to the cash flow situation of everyday people, not as the government determining whether or not you can afford to go to college. You mentioned that the people who are going to college are primarily going for business and technical skills and such. But you also mentioned that they are not every young person. Do you think that the student loan forgiveness, sorry, not forgiveness, relief would help

with making college more accessible to some students and would make it more appealing? And if so, then would that also not exacerbate the situation of rising tuition? Yeah, I think that the underlying concern with the cost of tuition relative to wages is going to be a much more difficult situation to be resolved. And there's different actions being floated with regards to the bureaucratic reforms that the Trump administration is making, as well as questions within academic institutions and educational space about, you know, well, there's a lot of fees lumped into this. And there's a lot of administrative bloat to the universities. I think that's a very interesting question to dive in deeper. But to me, regardless of the changes being made in that front, the situation in lies that there are tens of millions of people in the United States right now, predominantly Gen C and millennials that have trillions of dollars in student loan debt. And we're not, you know, you can reform the system and make, you know, our children's college tuition much, much lower and more proportional.

But that doesn't change the situation of our student loan debt. So the government has to think methodically about you have a very large set of the population that is trying to enter the workforce and will eventually will soon be in their prime working years that is being hamstrunged by large debt payments month over month. And what that does is it really hampers their ability to purchase property, to form families, to pay off other debts. You know, we have a big credit card debt situation in the country, being able to invest in the economy and generate revenue that way. So you don't want people to be boggled down in debt their whole lives. I think that conservative-minded people are pretty aware of that more generally. but it seems like student debt gets kind of titled up in this whole question about the state of the education system or the role of education and it needs to be looked at from a personal finance situation and from an economical lens of how we can free people to be prosperous and successful in the world. So the way you're talking about this is that it's both an issue for the people now who have to pay these debts and then also,

in the future who, when they are older and decidedly not of like college age, this will still have more economic implications for the country too, right? Yeah, because really by and large, most student loan processes, student loans and most student loans are private loans. You can only get so many in federal dollars. Don't begin accruing interest and don't really begin getting repaid until something. graduates. And so you're like, oh, great, I really, you know, have, you know, just day-to-day expenses throughout college. You know, a lot of people coordinate that in different ways. And then you graduate

and suddenly off the bat, it seems like most people, most of these people are paying upwards of over 50% of their, of their paychecks directly to loan payments. And that really is determinative in terms of the careers that they take on, where they choose to live, their, other habits, you know, and we want to encourage people to be healthy and socializing and eventually having children. And yet they can't. They literally financially are strong up to these minimum baseline payment that they have to make. Otherwise, it will continue to collect even more interest and they'll never be able to pay it off

because of the student debt situation. And so it has so many more exacerbated impacts on people's lives than just. you know, a number on a screen. Right. So you also mentioned that Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro had an initiative going on where you as a student could be able to get up to $2,000 deductible for your taxes based on your student loans. Could you go into that?

Yeah. So Pennsylvania is one of a number of states. And unfortunately, there are predominantly Democratic-controlled states that has some level of tax deduction for student loan repayment. So that would be if you made X amount of payment in student from that past year, you would be able to get a deduction from when your taxes are determined. And we do this similarly with mortgage interest payments, generally health care payments undergo some sort of tax deduction process. And so what this does is it reduces people's tax burden, ultimately, based off of their behavior of paying off debt. And so this has a twofold benefit. It's obviously one, it opens up financial, you know, cash flow for young people.

They will get a greater tax return later on in the year. There's different models to do that, too. It could be done on a monthly basis, but it would empower people to have more money, then they could put right back into paying even more off of their debt where they could pay for other things that they need to. But it also is very different than the Biden administration's policy of just making this debt go away in that what it is is incentivizing young people to be making their payments and to be paying down debt.

And I think what's so interesting about that is it shows a way in which the government can help to reduce the amount of debt that people have by incentivizing them to be doing the behavior that we want them to, which is to be paying down their debts. And so that could really have a compound effect across other policy domains of ways we can not make these numbers magically go in, certainly do things to improve the situation in the first place so that people don't end up in substantial debt, but also that we can create a culture in which people are really valuing personal finance and their financial accountability. This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Malia Tibbita with Sam Rouse, a young

voices contributor and fellow who has recently published an article in USA Today titled, Will Trump Fix the Student Loan Crisis? Conservatives should address mounting debt. Sam, would we be able to talk a little bit about the conservative side of this? We've talked a bit about how this is definitely an issue which will impact out to the wider national body while students are attempting to pay back these loans. And they could be helped by doing incentives or initiatives such as the tax deduction plan. Could we go into how conservatives could address this more? Do you think this is something that should be less partisan? I know you mentioned how this is mostly Democratic states doing things to help reduce student debt.

Do you think this is a place where Republicans should work more with Democrats? Yeah, absolutely. And I think, as we said earlier, first and foremost, this needs to stop being a culture war fight. This needs to be addressed much like other financial policy by actually looking at the data, looking at the financial situations of individuals and how the process works out and then doing a targeted policy approach. But more broadly, yeah, I think that this is a huge missed opportunity for the right, which seems to culturally value itself, pride itself on valuing personal finance and accountability,

yet doesn't seem interested in promoting policy that allows people to do so. And I think that what we saw in this past election was a huge fracture educationally between the genders, between generations. But this divide of college educated to non-college educated workers, yes, the conservative camp continues to benefit from non-college educated workers. But there was actually a huge growth, predominantly young men that were college-educated on the right. And I think there shows that there is, there doesn't need to be this permanent divide. It does not need to be a coalition that's driven solely by certain demographics. And it could be very inclusive and big tent. And by just making small tweaks in policy with regards to taxes and financial policy,

we can bring these people back under the umbrella that might otherwise share the same cultural concerns or share the same foreign policy concerns, but are worried about their financial situation. And certainly, you know, maybe optimistic that the new administration will lead to better job opportunities and wage growth and stuff, but still concerned about this debt situation. Right. So there's this situation that's ongoing of people who are attempting to pay back their student debt. But you also raise a concern about people in the future who will also be subject to having to pay loans. Do you think there's something that ideally institutions could do and something like a different avenue for students to take? Yeah, I think each person needs to weigh it in a number of different ways. Certainly there's the oversimplified version of considering what the student's going to be studying.

and the return value in terms of their salary. But I can speak from personal experience. You have to consider your social and emotional well-being and your ability to thrive in a certain environment. And some people benefit by a school that's in the middle of the city and has access to all sorts of arts. And other people are totally cool being somewhere else and being involved in campus culture.

And so that's the thing for people to weigh on their own. But I think on the student debt situation, I think there's a huge opportunity for students, just people in generally to collaborate with colleges and encourage them to move culturally to kind of breaking down where this cost comes in and giving people more options to do different program types to choose maybe off-campus housing that may be more affordable for there to be partnerships with businesses where you may be. do more of an apprenticeship model in certain semesters. I think some schools use co-op models very successfully, and those allow for students to some offset the cost of college, and to really integrate options for people to be able to choose. And so somebody that really values a traditional four-year college education

with a robust liberal arts curriculum and living on campus and being involved in Greek life can choose to do that. And somebody that is interested in just getting the, their feet wet in their career and immediately start working and living in a big city and having that pre-professional experience can do so as well. We can't be looking at this as one thing or the other. But I think there's a huge opportunity for there to be, yeah, free market solutions, private sector decisions to give people more leeway to make different choices in the future than

previous generations we're able to have. I know nowadays that there is a large pressure on people of this generation, Gen Z, millennials, to be well educated, to be college educated at the very least. Do you think that there is a solution in more de-emphasizing the importance of college for some roles in society and emphasizing the importance of alternatives such as trade and craft schools? I certainly think that we don't have enough of them and people are not aware of those options and certainly you can look to a lot of other countries where people kind of go, yeah, and from 18 through their 20s have some mixture of education and jobs and they might do this program and work in this for a little bit and then go somewhere else and do

something else and get some life experiences before they ultimately do maybe a more graduate degree. But I think by and large, as all data shows, that people with college educations generally have much better financial returns in their long run career, are able to engage in much more family formation, religious attendance, et cetera. And so the ultimate benefit to us is not to decide whether or not certain people should be able to achieve things. Obviously, it should be based off of their merit and their performance, but to provide as many opportunities as possible for people to choose to do so. And I think that it's less that people should not go to college.

I don't like that statement that comes so often on the right, but that people should be encouraged to choose college and educational programs that give them some flexibility. I think one of the biggest things that stood out to me in my college experience versus some others was I was given a lot of time to figure out what I wanted to be ultimately studying. And I was able to take some courses in different disciplines. And just for the first year or two, that takes off a lot of the pressure to rush into things, but also allows you to begin to get your footing. And we know that college isn't just about education. It has so many other social effects on people. It gives people most of the time the first chance to live away from home on their own

and begin to gain some of those life skills of independence and personal accountability. And so I think it's hard because I think when a lot of people talk about these alternatives, it takes away some of these bigger picture things that need to be considered too. Moving back around to the tax, the tax plan from Josh Shapiro. Do you agree that this is one of the better solutions to helping with student loans? Or do you have an alternate plan that you think would be better? Yeah, I think that looking at tax deductions is certainly an interesting proposal.

I'm sure there would be people that would go further and suggest tax credits. I think to me, what stands out now being somebody having graduated in the process of paying loans like that is this is a cash flow situation. This is about how much money you make in each paycheck and then how much money you owe each month. You know, it's how much you're going to pay and rent groceries, your credit card bill for those groceries, probably, you know, some Ubers, those kind of and your loans. And so we need to think about creatively, whether it's through tax policy or other financial policy, how we can make sure that people on a month by month basis are able to make these payments using the money that they're making. We're the United States of America. I think that everybody should be able to live in a house that is structurally sound and afford good food and have some social life and stuff. I think that's a bare minimum in the 21st century.

And so I think this is certainly the best policy that I've seen thus far, but I'd be open to other ones. And I think that's really one of the things that came from this piece was I think we need to start a conversation about this and start thinking about this issue in a different way. So we can come up with solutions like this that will address the ultimate financial situation of individuals. Yeah, definitely. Thank you so much for being here, Sam. Where can people follow your work? Yeah, you can find me on X at Sam Rouse 1 and certainly follow young voices and all of the great work that myself and other contributors are doing there. Thank you again for listening. This is Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM. I've been Malia Tibido.