(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



GOP Rep Fears Canceling Student Debt Will Harm Our Military [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']

Date: 2022-08-25

Amid all the Republican caterwauling and crocodile tearing over Biden’s decision forgive some student loan debts, one of their true concerns has just emerged: How we will get cannon fodder for our military if students can afford to go to college?

GOP Lawmaker Fears Reducing Student Debt Will Keep Poor Kids From Joining Military

Student loan forgiveness undermines one of our military’s greatest recruitment tools at a time of dangerously low enlistments,” he wrote.

“ Student loan forgiveness undermines one of our military’s greatest recruitment tools at a time of dangerously low enlistments,” he wrote.

Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) lamented Thursday on Twitter that relieving crushing debt for low-income Americans paying off student loans could reduce the number of people who join the military to fund their higher education.

Student debt as a military recruitment tool. What next: Bring back debtor’s prisons?

HuffPost collected some twitter responses. Here are just a few:

x "Student loan forgiveness is making it difficult to manipulate poor and desperate youth into a very real probability of getting them killed."



Fixed it for you. https://t.co/hmePgPgCsa — Heather Antos (@HeatherAntos) August 25, 2022

x Jesus Christ, dude, we satirists can't compete with this. "Who will fill our military's graveyards if they can afford college instead?" https://t.co/abVjIq9K8v — Fred Van Lente (@fredvanlente) August 25, 2022

x Maybe enlistment is down because Republicans fist bump when they deny benefits to veterans. https://t.co/dHHlghkXvQ — Kevin Hench (@KevinHench) August 25, 2022

And some more that I found with the original tweet:

x "We can't feed the meat grinder if we can't tempt people into the meat grinder!" — Alexander Kramer 🌹☕✊ #Solidarity (@AlexKramerBlogs) August 25, 2022

x Jim, you ever think about raising their WAGES. It's sad how Republicans treat our military! — KALIFORNIA KING (@gaslog) August 25, 2022

x Okay, so I rearranged my whole life to avoid student loan debt, prepaid for my kids’ college educations since their births, and now everyone’s getting $10,000 forgiven?



I think that’s great 😊 Congrats, guys. A rising tide lifts all boats. — AlwaysAshley (@AshleyAlready) August 24, 2022

There are some tweets (or twits) who point out that the military was traditionally a way for the poor to get out of poverty, but that’s not the reason Banks is upset. And then there’s this one, which really appeals to me as a student of religious history:

pbs.twimg.com/...

Back in the Civil War, the rich could pay someone to be drafted in their place, which led to riots in New York City. Banks’s inadvertent revelation won’t go that far, but it’s still good fodder for another Dem ad.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/25/2118801/-GOP-Rep-Fears-Canceling-Student-Debt-Will-Harm-Our-Military

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/

You are viewing proxied material from magical.fish. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.