[VTCp9xGqq-Y_SPEAKER_00]: He's a student at Middlesex Community College, a longtime bartender around the area, and has a story to tell us about his experiences with student debt. So I'm going to hand it over to Joshua.
[SPEAKER_01]: So my little story is about me and my girlfriend. My girlfriend and I are high school sweethearts. We love each other. so usually there's no problem with that but our love story is what i like to call our love story has a uniquely modern twist we can't get married because we can't afford the huge increase in student loan payments which will result in us taking that step forward moving into a higher tax bracket i've got to say i just turned 30 and like many people I started college when I was 18, but I couldn't afford to continue, even after taking in some modest student loans. My debt right now is only about $5,000. for several years now. After all that education and training, she makes an average of about $30,000 to $40,000 a year. To pay for education, she racked up over $130,000 in debt. If it wasn't for the loan forgiveness programs, which let us defer payments temporarily, we would have up to $2,000 to $3,000 a month. We can't afford that, and as I said earlier, we get bumped into a higher tax bracket, which would be a financial disaster. So back to the question of what's the problem. see, this is a fiscal obstacle, not a question of what we want to do with our lives together. Right now, I'm back in school, pursuing the dream I had when I started college for the first time more than 10 years ago. In that decade, I've been bartending full-time, and tackling issues like cancer, climate change, and virology. I can only afford it because of grants and scholarships I've gotten, which are only applicable for low-income students. If we guessed it, if we got married, I would no longer qualify for those grants and scholarships, which would bring me back to square one. This is why I was so inspired by the grassroots campaigns of people like Hannah Calhoun. She's been fighting for a free public college and a livable wage for teachers and parents, like Alexandria Garcia-Cortez, also another career bartender, have really motivated me to get out and volunteer even when I feel like just one person isn't going to make a difference. In fact, in addition to classes, studying, working, commuting, I've been volunteering, organizing my group at my school, Willis-Knighton Community College, knocking on doors in New Hampshire and organizing to get out the vote in several other states. I'm just one of 46 million Americans who are burdened by student debt, totaling an astounding $1.6 trillion. paying higher interest rates than the big banks paid after they were bailed out. That's wrong. Forgiving student debt would be one of the most important decisions in our generation for the economy and for regular people. I'm no economist, but it seems pretty obvious that if you put money into the hands of working people, they will spend it, and it will be better for the economy than if you gave it to bosses and CEOs and wait for it to trickle down. In fact, estimate $180 billion per year, and it would create more than one million jobs. When I think about myself and others struggling just to get by, it makes me think of my relatives back in Puerto Rico. My grandparents were displaced for about five months after the hurricane. In the two years since the storm, they've basically depleted all their retirement funds dealing with the aftermath. I see how we always seem to have enough money for wars and the military, but not enough to help our citizens with basic human needs.