Republican Congressman Thinks People Should Have To Face Death To Get Free Education

A Republican Congressman from Florida admitted during an interview with Newsmax that it isn't "fair" that people are having their student loans forgiven because it could drag down military recruitment. He then went into detail about what these young people should have to go through in order to get a free education in America, and it was downright terrifying. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this truly bizarre rationale.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

We have now had multiple Republican officials come out and basically say the quiet part out loud, which is if we're forgiving student loan debt, then young people have no incentive what to whatsoever to go and join the military. The latest person to make this claim was, uh, Republican representative Michael waltz down here from the state of Florida, six congressional districts serving the us house of representatives who went on Newsmax recently and said this

Well, that's just a tired, old socialist talking point, uh, from, from the leading socialist, uh, in the Senate, Bernie Sanders, uh, we never gave tax breaks to billionaires. We lowered the corporate tax rate. Corporations are owned by shareholders, many people's pensions, retirement funds, the stock, people who invest in the stock market. Uh, and we saw the economy before the pandemic booming with record low unemployment across every single demographic category in the country, uh, because we allowed, uh, companies and individuals to decide what they're gonna do with the money rather than the federal government here in, nor there I have to tell you as a veteran, uh, the, the law that, that Biden and the excuse that Biden is using for this a 2003 law intended to help veterans going to fight after nine 11 as a, as a veteran myself, this is a slap in the face.

And the other piece that not a lot of people are talking about is that the military uses educational benefits as a key recruiting tool. The military right now is in a recruiting crisis. And if young people, 17, 18 year olds say, well, my debt's just gonna get a race for free. I don't have to go crawl in the mud. I don't have to go put my life on the line for the country. It's going to take this recruiting crisis actually, uh, from again, from bad to worse. So not only is it unfair, not only do 60% of Americans not working Americans not have college degrees, they get no benefits. Many members of my family successfully paid off their debt and worked hard and did the right thing. But it's actually going to negatively impact the recruiting for our military as well.

I mean, if they don't have to crawl through the mud and put their life on the line and have bullets go whi by their face, in order to pay off their education, then what's the point because that's what he wants you to have to go through. You. You see that this is what Republicans want you to have to do. They want you to have to serve as can fodder. And then if you survive, you can come back and get a free education. But if you're not willing to do all those things, then you don't deserve to have a free college education here in the United States. Now, Mr. Waltz, of course is a former green beret. He was a, a, a military officer. So he did go through the military. So I have to assume based on that, that his college education was, was in fact paid for by the United States, taxpayers under the GI bill. You're welcome by the way, sir, but it's not fair to make everybody go through those same hoops.

You really just want people to go and serve as your can fodder to go and enrich the military industrial complex. That's what this is about. That's what these Republicans are afraid of. That if we start offering debt free college, we may not be able to get people to, to go and sign up for the military anymore. And then of course, if recruitment numbers continue to fall, they're gonna have a harder and harder time justifying sending the Pentagon 850 billion a year. Oh no.