Trump Budget Would Prevent Low Income Americans From Going To College

Donald Trump famously once said that he loves the poorly educated, and thanks to his administration’s budget proposal for next year, there will be a LOT more poorly educated people in America. The budget proposal slashes the amount of money that low income Americans can get via the Pell Grant program, and now recipients could only get a fraction of a year’s worth of tuition – an amount so small that it will put the cost of college out of reach for millions of people. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what’s happening.

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

Many years ago, Donald Trump famously said that he loves the poorly educated, which of course was a very apt description of his entire MAGA movement. They are really just a group of poorly educated people. And if Donald Trump's 2026 budget proposal makes it into reality, there's gonna be a lot more poorly educated people here in the United States because Trump's 2026 budget calls for the reduction of Pell Grants here in the United States, along with the almost complete elimination of the federal work study programs, both of which allow low income people to receive money to pay for college expenses. The Pell Grant would be reduced from $7,395 per year down to $5,710 per year. So we're looking at a $1,600 per year reduction in the amount of Pell grants. 40% of people in college write this very second, rely on federal Pell grants to be able to afford it.

And as I mentioned, it also comes with a near complete repeal of the federal work study program, which allows these low income students to do jobs. And then that money is used to pay for their tuition money from the federal government, by the way. So lower income people who do not necessarily qualified for full ride scholarships, which are exceedingly rare, unless you're a top level ale athlete these days, um, you guys won't be able to afford to go to college unless you want to take out massive student loans, which for a lot of people, the fear of those student loans and the repayment fees and the interest rates is enough to now prevent them from going to college, which could prevent them from entering the field or industry that they wanted to go into. I'm not saying that you can't have a happy, successful life if you don't go to college.

Millions of people do. You don't have to go to college to be successful. However, your chances of success are increased greatly if you have that college diploma. And we may have low income people out there that are as bright as can be, but still the college they want to go to, they couldn't get a full ride scholarship. And now they may not be able to afford to go to college at all thanks to Trump's budget. So that could be the person that could have cured cancer, right? Republicans love to tell us about, you know, oh, you

Aborted that person and they may have grown up to cure cancer or cure world hunger. No, those people could be alive today and you are now starving them of the opportunity to get the education they need to be able to do those things. We're dealing with real live young adults that want to go to college, that want a better life, that wanna make a better world. And you are robbing that. You're robbing them of that one because you hate colleges. You know, I, I actually saw a video clip the other day. It was kind of funny. These people at a Trump rally said, why is it that everybody goes to college? They come back, a democrat? What are they teaching 'em? Maritime colleges? And the funny thing was like, they're not teaching them to be Democrats. PE people are just, you know, getting outta that hometown.

They've never left for 18 years, finally. And realizing, hey, things are different. And different is actually good. They're exposed to more worldviews. They learn new things, they have new experiences. And when you're, you have those things, you're more likely to be more open-minded, which is less likely to make you a Republican. And that's what Republicans hate. And that's why they want as few people as humanly possible to go to college. Now, they all went, by the way, they all went to college, the people telling you, oh, no, no, no.