President Biden just gave a huge help to young families all across this country. It isn’t enough. But it’s very important, and no Republican would have done it.
I fully expect right wing religious leaders, including “star” right wing internet priests, to oppose it.
But this old granny who paid off all her student loans decades ago is thrilled that President Biden is providing between $10,000 and $20,000 in student debt relief to our young people. I think it’s just another sign of how degraded American Christianity has become that so many religious leaders — including many Catholic religious leaders — oppose this.
I know young couples who literally cannot afford to get married because of how much their student loan payments would increase if they did. Quite a number of these couples are finding preachers who will marry them off the government record. They marry, but don’t file the papers to make the marriage “legal,” so they can stay single in the eyes of the law.
That is what the burden of student loan debt is doing to our young people in this country. It is truncating their futures. It is keeping them from marrying and forming families of their own. But “pro family” Republicans and their whore religious leaders oppose doing anything to help these young people. What they want instead is tax cuts for billionaires and hand-outs of government money to the religious leaders’ “ministries.”
These religious leaders are bought. They’re whores. When they say that they are “pro family,” it’s a lie.
Today’s young people are not able to afford the children they want because child care is a mountain they can’t climb. They see their kids trapped in public schools that the Republican Party is trying to dismantle while the bishops rake in dollars for Catholic schools these young parents can’t afford and may not even agree with.
They struggle to pay off medical bills because their health insurance — if they have it — provides spotty, limited coverage and often reneges on even the partial payments it is supposed to provide. Simply having a baby can put a young couple under a load of debt for years. Covering well-child care costs are huge, and if the baby has health problems, they are sunk.
But guess who opposes paid child care?
The “pro family” Republican Party.
And who backs the Republican Party? Why “pro life,” “pro family” religious leaders.
Who opposes health care?
The Republican Party.
And who backs the Republican Party? “Pro life,” “pro family” religious leaders back them.
I could go on and on. Paid maternity leave, a $35 cap on life-saving insulin, a living wage, equal pay, etc. All of these are de facto opposed by right wing religious leaders who back the Republican Party and equate it with Christ the Lord.
Today, President Biden took a bite out of the burden of student loan debt. What he did is not nearly enough. But it is 100% more than any Republican would have done.
I expect pearl clutching and condemnation from right wing media. I expect all the little right wing puppet religious leaders to back them.
I fully expect to be told all over again, just as I have been every election since Trump rode down that escalator, that I am going to hell for not voting Republican.
The trouble with all that is that I really am pro family. I really do believe that stable family life is not only the key to solving many of our national problems, but the right of every child.
I’m so pro life, I think there’s more to it than making abortion illegal and driving women back to subservient second class citizenship. I think that women are people, and their lives matter too, and — stay with me now — that born people have a right to life too. I’m so pro life that I am willing to do what it takes to make sure that life goes on after birth.
That makes me a Democrat. I’m a Jesus-loving, pro life, pro family, pro humanity, democracy-loving, feminist, Catholic Democrat.
I want a future for my grandkids. And the right wing and all their bought-and-paid-for clergy are running as hard and fast as they can toward a future where the natural world is dying, a handful of billionaires have everything while the rest of us are in a bitter struggle for base survival, and American democracy has been replaced with a quasi dictatorship like the one in Russia.
President Biden is giving debt relief to our young people. Anybody familiar with this problem knows that, while this is a good start, we need more.
But to get that, we’ve got to change Congress. Student debt forgiveness was voted down by Republicans just like child care, low-cost insulin and maternity leave.
The President can only do so much with his magic pen. We need to change the law, and to do that, we need to send a bunch of Republicans in Congress back to private life.
I have never been this partisan before. But the Republican Party has drawn such a hard line by voting against anything and everything that would benefit We the People that there is no other option. If you favor helping the people of this country, or, for that matter, if you want American democracy to survive, you have to vote them out.
For today, I want to say congratulations to America’s young people. President Biden is giving you a dollop of student debt relief. It’s a start and a clear indication of the will to do more. Stay the course and fight the fight. We’ll get the rest.
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