ROANOKE, Va. (WDBJ) – Dozens of people lined up for the first-come-first-served debate between Republican Congressman Bob Good and Democratic Challenger Josh Throneburg Wednesday. They debated student loan forgiveness, the national debt, and the southern border.
Question: As of 2022, an estimated 43 million people owe a federal student loan, averaging about $36,000 per person. President Biden has initiated a student loan debt cancellation program. About a third of all borrowers owe less than 10 thousand in cancellation amount. And women on average have larger loan amounts than men. What are some other options that might alleviate some of the burdening costs of a college education?
“First of all, it is not excluded among cancellation is the student loan transfer scheme, the debt cannot be canceled or forgiven, it can only be transferred to those who did not pay for it. It is immoral to make those who didn’t go to college, those who work their way through college, those who were, I guess, chumps and paid off their student loans to have to pay the student loan debt for Americans making up to $125,000 per individual, or up to $250,000 per family. The average income in Virginia in the fifth district is nowhere near $125,000 per person, or $250,000 per family. This is benefiting the wealthy elites that are beholden to the Democrat Party, President Biden, in addition to being it’s immoral for him to do this, and President Biden himself said a year ago, he did not have the constitutional authority to do this. And then he did it anyway, Nancy Pelosi said he didn’t have the authority to do it. And he did it anyway, his own Secretary of Education said didn’t have the authority to do it, and that he did it anyway, this will cost American taxpayers up to a trillion dollars. And they’re doing not that the administration is doing nothing to deal with the problems with the student loan situation, or with college debt generally, or the cost of college, we’re going to keep on making the loans while we’re forgiving, up to a trillion dollars worth of loans. The fact is that college costs are rising rapidly because of federal subsidies that cut federal government ought to get out of education, we should never have taken the student loan industry away from the private entities and maybe in federalized it. And what we’re doing is we’re subsidizing the rapidly rising cost of higher education, which is far higher implement inflationary standpoint than anything else in our country today. So we the federal government want to get out of education, there is no constitutional justification for but what we ought to do is allow student loans and Pell grants to be eligible for other kinds of education that training the highly skilled workers that we need in our economy today. So that student loan transfer scheme is unconstitutional, and it’s immoral,” said Good.
“So I’m a dad, I’ve got two kids, which means we have cartoons, and one of the cartoons that gets watched or used to at least was Daniel Tiger. If you’re familiar with him, he says a line that I think is actually helpful to adults. He says, ‘sometimes you have two feelings at the same time. And that’s okay.’ About the student loan forgiveness. I have two feelings at the same time, and I’m going to be okay with that. I’m so glad that the burden of student debt is being addressed. I think that’s a great thing. And I think there are a lot of young folks, a lot of students who have because of the rising cost of college have taken on large amounts of loans. Now they are struggling under that debt. And it’s hard. And I’m glad it’s being addressed. I wish it had been addressed differently, I probably would have to agree with at least a portion of what was just said, I don’t know that passing. This is not a systemic solution. This is a one-time targeted toward a particular group of people, I would have loved to have seen those interest rates that they had on those federal loans just lowered across the board to make it more affordable to anyone who have a student loans, I would have loved to see some different solutions that still addressed the idea of the burden of student debt. But that did it in a way that was more holistic and more systemic. I do think that there’s opportunity for us to lower the costs of education. I am in favor of free community college to provide an alternative for folks that want to get an education, but don’t want to have to go into a lot of debt. I think the expansion of Pell grants is great. And I would love to see more people who have opportunities to access more funds and more resources for their education. And I think that our tech schools could be built up over the course of time I spent a day touring CATEC up in the Charlottesville Albemarle area, it’s brilliant, there’s so much great work that’s being done. It’s preparing students for the workforce at a very low cost. And I think there are things that we can do to educate folks get them trained into the workforce time without having to take so much debt. Thank you,” said Throneburg.
Question: The Federal Budget Deficit fell to $1.4 Trillion. Basically, cut in half from where it was a year ago. The Biden Administration says that shows that the President’s policies on the economy are working. However, the national debt now sits at $31 trillion for the first time, What federal programs do you believe need to be reined in, and are there any we should be spending more on? For instance, Social Security.
“I’m probably one of the very few Democrats that you’ll hear talk about national debt. And if you’ve ever gone to my website, you’ll see that on the first page of my website, it’s something I talk about, because part of my concern is building a sustainable future for our kids and grandkids. And the reality is, is $31 trillion in national debt is a real threat to the future of our kids. And so I am someone who thinks fiscal responsibility is important. I’m sure the congressman and I would maybe differ in how we wanted to allocate fiscal responsibility. But I believe in that and I do think our national debt is a very real issue. There are three things that I would say about this specifically, number one. I think there’s a narrative out there that Democrats are the big spenders and Republicans are the fiscally responsible ones. I want to remind everyone that Donald Trump added to our national deficits an equal amount to Barack Obama, but in only four years. We just have a spending problem in this nation, it’s not reserved for one party or the other. It’s that we have to figure out our spending, we need to make better decisions so we can get. Number two, I’m a small business owner, and we have a house-cleaning business. And one of the things that is very real for those of you who are small business owners is, yes, sometimes you take on debt, sometimes there’s an investment worth making because it’s gonna pay off in the end. And so you do that. So there are times when I think it’s appropriate for us to take on debt. Honestly, the PACT Act was one of those where I thought that’s something we should have paid for, because our veterans are worth investing in. But the third thing I’ll say, is this, the one thing I never did, right, we would never do in our small business is take the richest customers with the biggest houses and give them really big discounts on their service, because that’s not good for us. The $2 trillion in taxes that Donald Trump gave didn’t help our debt,” said Throneburg.
“One of the greatest threats to our country is our fiscal situation with 31 trillion national debt, which is $90,000 per citizen. So each of you sitting in the room today, those 90,000 That’s your federal share. I’m on the House Budget Committee, and I had the Democrat Chairman of the House Budget Committee, when I said that on the House floor, he said stop saying that we’re not asking anybody to pay that back as if it’s Monopoly money and if it’s not real. While Republicans have been responsible, also increasing the national debt because they haven’t done a good job spending historically, the Democrats are way better at spending money. The Republicans are pleased that this administration has spent $10 trillion on new spending for the first time that’s ever happened in the first two years of administration. Nobody tells Democrats what comes after trillions if they don’t want them to know what what might come after trillions. But they’ve got 31 trillion national debt reckless spending, and I have heard other Democrats talk about being tough on spending. I have heard other Democrats talk about being concerned about I’ve seen other Democrats fret and they feel bad, but I’ve not seen one Democrat in Congress yet voted against all of the spending, they forced upon the American people that have taken the national debt to again, record levels, the highest percentage of our GDP that we’ve ever had in the history of our country. You’ve even got the president, he’s lying about cutting the deficit. He said, Look, I’ve cut the deficit last year this year, that would be like Harry Truman saying he cut the deficit because we didn’t spend as much after World War Two, we spent record amounts in the name of the China virus situation, we’ve exploded the national debt, we continue to spend recklessly again trillion dollars with the student loan transfer scheme, a trillion dollars in the inflation increase bill, the translation increase aggregate we can’t get any Democrats to deal with the spending or to help us reduce the spending. They’ll talk about and they’ll feel bad about when they go back to their districts or when their campaign. But I have signed a letter to Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell, leaders of the Republican House and Senate saying I will not vote for any new additional payment of any government spending that does not secure the border does not return us to American energy independence that does not eliminate the COVID vaccine mandates. And that doesn’t go back to the 2019 spending before we’ve increased spending because of the China virus,” said Good.
Question: What are three congressional actions that you would support to control the flow of immigrants seeking to enter the U.S southern border?
“Well, again, this is along with the national debt of issues. Perhaps the greatest threat to our country was 5 million illegals invading our country over the first two years of this administration, not allowed to make the country but helped to make the country by this President’s policy. This present president is purposefully willfully intentionally facilitating an invasion, which is a violation of his constitutional responsibilities. Article four, section four of the Constitution says that the federal government’s responsibility to protect the states from invasion, this is an invasion facilitated by this administration. It’s not just 5 million illegals, 4 million of which has been released in the country, 1 million on the criminal God aways. They don’t want to be apprehended because their terrorist ties the criminal ties, but they’re bringing record amounts into fentanyl and all their human trafficking sex trafficking across our border, it is so bad you can’t believe unless you’ve seen I’ve been to the border five times I’ve met with ranchers who live there. I’ve met with local law enforcement, I’ve met with Border Patrol who is not allowed to do their job. But quite simply, we aren’t we do have the roadmap, we can go back to the policies that we’re working on in the Trump administration. Number one, finish the wall. Number two, allow Border Patrol to do its job and actually prevent illegals from coming into the country. Number three is to eat verify that that takes away the incentive for the folks that work illegally in our country and catch a release. What we do now is we catch them and release them into the country at taxpayer expense. We fly them or bus them wherever they want to go in the country. That was not a problem until these governors start extending into Democrat areas to Democrat sanctuary cities and Democrat sanctuary states where they kept him in Martha’s Vineyard. What about 48 hours before they shipped them someplace else after they had declared themselves a sanctuary city. Never in the history of the country has our own president done more to intentionally harm the United States than what this President has done just with the border situation a lot. So we have the policies that we’re working on the rate increase administration. And another other policy we need to go back to this remain in Mexico. The previous president had a policy that those who are seeking asylum or refuge in our country have Have to wait in Mexico until their case was heard. Only about 10% of the cases are actually approved in court. So all we have to do is try the policies that we’re working with previous administration,” said Good.
“Yeah, so we have a very real immigration problem. I will say, I know there’s frustration about people, you know, taxpayers paying into the student debt. I don’t love the idea of paying for your five trips to the border when we don’t share a border here in Virginia except North Carolina. But there is a very real problem that we do need to address in our country. Three things that I would say number one, I think we do need immigration reform. That’s something that Democrats and Republicans have been unable to, to pass in Congress and actually create a new immigration reform for our country. And I think that’s one thing we do need to do in Congress that neither side has been able to accomplish. Number two, I do think we need to make sure that our border control has the funding that they need in order to do the job. So Congressman will have control of the purse strings, making sure that our border control is funded appropriately and adequately as part of it. Number three, I would love to see an expanded guest worker visa program, I would look there. I know that so many times the way that we talk about people who are coming across the border illegally is in a very negative sense. There are a vast majority of people who they’re just trying to build a better life for them, their families earn a living. And as a small business owner, I can tell you, I never had a problem finding enough work. I always had a problem finding enough workers, that was always the bottleneck towards growing my business. If we could build a robust guest worker visa program that would allow us to bring people into the country, we would know where they were, they would have a social security number, they would pay into our taxes. And we would be able to keep tabs on where people were because they were working. And it would provide so much economic opportunity for our farmers for our small businesses by bringing folks in that could do those jobs. Not only does that help us with the large amount of people who are coming across the border illegally, but it builds up our economic opportunity here and we can see small businesses begin to flourish and grow. So that’s a third way that we can help you,” said Throneburg.
To learn more about both of the 5th district candidates, read and watch their profile stories here:
Bob Good profile
Josh Throneburg profile
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