John Kennedy asks witness what "systemic racism" means during student debt forgiveness hearing

i will try to be brief we have a distinguished panel of witnesses that i would like to hear from today i think this is a timely subject i have many questions and i hope to get educated today why student debt why not credit card debt why not automobile loan debt why not mortgage debt if we're going to forgive debt um how do we be fair to all americans what role if any did our universities play in the accumulation of all of this student debt um i'm not i'm not sure that this is the right place to address education policy but i if anybody knows the answer i would like to know why uh some college textbooks cost as much as i paid for my first car um and these are the kind of issues that i hope that we can address today uh what are the demographics of the people who owe os um who who owe a student debt is there really a i'm not suggesting there isn't i don't know is there a racial gap how equitable is it to ask taxpayers who haven't gone to college to pay for those who have gone to college these are the kind of issues that i hope we can address today and as i say my mind is open and i'm looking forward to hearing the answers and with that i will i will turn turn it back over to uh our sting distinguished chair with whom i have worked closely set up setting up this hearing and i enjoyed every minute of it well thank you very much thank you madam chair can you hear me now i can hear you um dr akers can you hear me yes i can i want to understand the context um the money that our students borrowed were they defrauded well some some in fact were and we have for the most part have made those students whole through debt forgiveness that's specific to what about the majority what about the majority of them the majority of them have not i think the farthest you could go to say is that we've made the process complex so that there might be challenges for them to actually understand the obligation that they're taking on but they they were fully aware of the obligation that they were accepting okay uh mr ramondi can you hear me sir yes i can senator let me just say for the record i hate virtual hearings it's not senator says uh um our chair's fault that's not her fault but i just hate them i think they're very inefficient um let me try to understand the context you don't make these loans is that right mr ramone that's correct um the government makes these loans is that correct and what where does the government get the money borrows it from uh the u.s treasury department okay uh when the government loans this money are the are the majority of them honest loans or have the students been defrauded well i think as dr aker said you know the majority i would agree the majority have been for the right purpose there were some shady schools out there and for the most part those have been closed uh and and those loans forgiven okay have you ever borrowed money before yes i have did you pay it back yes i did would it be fair to say why did you pay it back well for example i took out student loans um when i was in college and um that that college degree afforded me an opportunity to get a good job i went to a right but why did you pay the money back because i had i had an obligation to pay it back senator i had signed the promissory note and i had an obligation to pay back did you consider it a moral principle a moral obligation moral and legal yes okay um now let me give you a chance to respond to i know that you uh you've been sued in a number of instances um is there anything else you wanted to say in defense of your position on those lawsuits yes thank you um you know the programs i think as you've heard from a number of the witnesses here today are extremely complex and the rules and regulations associated with them are complex um it's difficult for borrowers to understand why one loan is eligible for a certain program and why another loan isn't eligible for our program we help we try to help borrowers through that process and we try to help explain it and let me stop you mr mounty let me stop you for a minute so why don't we write simpler rules that's a great question um you know i think i think the programs and and my recommendations in my in my oral testimony here was that we do need to make them more simple today there are 60 different repayment options available to borrowers nine different income driven repayment plans all with complicated as you as you can imagine government sounding acronyms that make it very difficult for borrowers to understand and we think worse well it would seem to me that that might be one thing that that our subcommittee could work on is is designing a student loan application process that looks like somebody designed a damn thing on purpose i mean these are supposed to be our breast and our brightest who are borrowing the money if they can't understand it who the hell can uh let me move on though uh dr baker uh did i unders do you think the student loan program and the way we administer it is is systemically racist is that what i understood you to say i was explaining uh the ways that a systemically racist society has made it so that people of color especially black people rely on student loans at a higher rate than other people do you think america is systemically racist do i think that the american society has systemic racism yes okay what does that mean what does that mean uh broadly speaking um it means that we have sort of set up pathways um in our society where uh different people are uh have different opportunities and options that are before them so as an example um it would mean that potentially one person uh in the world has uh five different options they can uh go to college they can take an inheritance from their family and start a business they they have all these sorts of different sets of options what systemic racism does yes ma'am just give me if you could just give me your definition because i'm gonna run out of time here oh sure sorry about that professors um so basically systemic racism says that we have set up pathways so certain people of certain races get more opportunities and more benefits than other people do okay do you think smu is a systemically racist institution do i think that smu works within a racist society yes no but do you think smu is a systemically racist institution does it have evidence of systemic racism all universities do yes you you did you did your graduate work at vanderbilt do you think it's a systemically racist institution all universities work with any systemically racist society yeah but but but but i'm trying to understand i understand your comment about america being systemically racist but but we have different institutions in america so let me ask you more directly is smu a systemically racist institution there is systemic racism at smu and at all other institutions so you think every university is systemically racist i think that everyone who operates within the united states operates within a systemically racist system okay how do you if we forgive all the student loan debt how do you think we should pay for it uh i think uh there are several options on the table around potential increases uh four different tasks i'm asking i'm asking you how you think we ought to pay for it sure i i would say that that's not my area of expertise you don't have any you just want us to forgive it and not worry about paying it back i i would say that as an education policy expert i can talk to you about those areas i think there are a number of plans in place and that there are people in the committee who have talked about potentially raising the taxes on higher wealth individuals there are options that's not my expertise and i've gone i've gone way over i don't wanna i assume that that our chair is gonna let us have a second round of course john there'll be a second round no you go

Channel: Forbes Breaking News

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Keywords: Sen. John Kennedy, student debt, Senate

Id: iE6MtHxFGsQ

Length: 10min 6sec (606 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 13 2021