fresh voices from the front lines of change

Democracy

Health

Climate

Housing

Education

Rural

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) thinks that it is not Congress’s job to keep college affordable.

That’s what she said at a House Education and the Workforce Committee markup last week of a GOP-backed bill that would prevent the U.S. Department of Education from enforcing new rules on for-profit colleges: “It is not the role of the Congress to make college affordable.”

So it isn’t Congress’s job to ensure we have an educated workforce, and it isn’t Congress’s job to give the same kind of help and aid many congressmen and women received when attempting to afford a college education.

And this isn’t the first time Virginia Foxx has attacked students who find themselves unable to afford college. In April of 2012 she said she had “very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because there’s no reason for that.”

Why doesn’t the GOP want to help students on the path to a higher education which so many of them claim is the main way to achieve the American Dream? Because this is who they are. This is the GOP.

In Foxx’s home state of North Carolina, tuition has increased by 31 percent during 2008-2013, as state funding for higher education has decreased by 14.6 percent. When the states fail to finance their own higher education institutions, who can desperate students turn to?

According to Virginia Foxx, not their congresswoman.

Pin It on Pinterest

Spread The Word!

Share this post with your networks.