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Our nation, and indeed our planet, are at a critical juncture, and it is imperative that we recognize what we are up against and what we must do to move our politics toward justice and human decency.
And we can start by acknowledging that young people in America in particular have been through a lot, and that their confidence in politics, democracy, and government has been shaken.
The COVID pandemic, the worst public health crisis in 100 years, disrupted the education of our young people, increased isolation, anxiety, and mental illness.
We have extreme weather and climate change that, if we don’t act boldly, will only become worse — significantly impacting the future of young people in their lifetimes.
In 2008, greed and recklessness on Wall Street plunged the country into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. As children they watched American households lose over $13 trillion in savings, wiping out the life savings of their parents and their retirement dreams.
And now, while the richest people in America become much richer, the younger generation faces the reality that they may well have a standard of living lower than their parents.
If this country is going to survive, if democracy is going to prevail, step by step the Democratic Party must regain the trust of young people in this country.
That is not just the right thing to do. It is good politics.
One place that the president and Democrats can begin that is by laying out an agenda that makes it clear they will address another unfortunate reality confronting young people in America:
That reality is that when young people leave college we are saddling them with decades of debt just for doing what we tell them they need to do in order to be successful: get a college education.
That reality is that there are many hundreds of thousands of young people who are graduating college with $50,000, $100,000, or more in debt and some of them, for financial reasons, aren’t even able to finish their degree.
The tragic reality is that in the richest country in the history of the world, too many of our young people are giving up their dreams of a higher education because they fear the enormous amount of debt they will face when they leave school. And the absurdity is that this is a moment when we desperately need a skilled workforce!
At a time of major labor shortages, how many great doctors, nurses, scientists and teachers are we losing because our children cannot graduate college without mountains of debt? At a time when we are trying to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and transform our energy systems away from fossil fuel, how many young people who need training in order to become skilled mechanics, carpenters, welders, and electricians will not get the post-high school training they need? How many great businesses will never be started?
In the richest country in the history of the world, it is a national disgrace that we lead the world in the amount of student debt owed by our people and, at the same time, are falling behind many other countries in the percentage of our people who pursue higher education.
In the richest country in the history of the world, hundreds of thousands of young people should not be giving up their dreams because paying off their student loans is too expensive.
No, that is not what America is supposed to be about.
It’s time to hit the reset button.
Our mission must be to give hope to young people. If every parent in this country, every teacher in this country, and every student in this country understands that if kids study hard and do well in school they will be able to receive a higher education, regardless of the income of their family, that will have a radical impact on primary and secondary education in the United States — and on the lives of millions of families.
That’s what we can accomplish by making public colleges and universities tuition-free and making certain that every American, no matter his or her economic status, has the opportunity for a higher education.
Never let anyone tell you this is a radical idea. Tuition-free college is the norm in other modern nations, and it’s time for us to join them.
This is not just good politics, it’s good policy. That’s not just good for the individual student, but it’s good for our entire economy.
In the 21st century, a public education system that goes from kindergarten through high school is no longer good enough. The world is changing, technology is changing, our economy is changing. If we are to succeed in the highly-competitive global economy and have the best-educated workforce in the world, public colleges and universities must become tuition-free.
If our country can provide trillions of dollars in tax breaks to the top one percent and profitable corporations, if we can cancel hundreds of billions in loans for wealthy business owners during the pandemic when Trump was president and if we can spend trillions of dollars on war and weapons, please don’t tell me that we cannot afford to make college free in this country.
Thank you for joining me in that fight.
Independent Senator Bernie Sanders represents the state of Vermont.
