On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) said that while President Joe Biden’s student loan program is “more targeted than a bunch of the proposals that were out there” and will mostly help people making under $75,000 a year, it should have been targeted towards people going into hard-to-fill-jobs “instead of being hedge fund managers,” and “We’re not going to have a shortage of sports marketing degrees here.”
Klobuchar stated, “I think you know during the presidential, I was the one that said, rich kids, we shouldn’t be paying for their college. You just can’t staple a diploma for free under everyone’s chair. Part of that is, I think we need to focus on apprenticeships and filling the hard-to-fill jobs. That being said, Bill, this is more targeted than a bunch of the proposals that were out there. And 87% of the money goes to people that are making less than $75,000 a year. You’ve got — it will help nurses — it helps nurses, it helps teachers, it helps electricians. A bunch of people have community college loans. That being said, if I could wave a magic wand and do what I want to do, I would’ve actually tied it to the hard-to-fill jobs. We have ten million job openings right now in our country, two million of them are in health care, assisted living. So, if people will go into those jobs instead of being hedge fund managers, then we could actually put the loan repayment help and have it connected to people going into the jobs that we need to fill. I think that would be a way you can do it, but I do think it’s important for people to understand that this is a targeted program that he put out.”
She later added, “We’re not going to have a shortage of sports marketing degrees here. We’re going to have a shortage of plumbers, electricians, we have a shortage of nurses, technology workers, and some of those jobs require high education, some of them require apprenticeships. And we’ve just got to meet people where they are, and that’s why I’d like to tie it to the jobs that we need to fill.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
