President Obama is scheduled to be at the University today, and I figure he will pick up a copy of The BG News while he’s here — seeing as how we are the most awesome college newspaper in the country.
As a normal citizen, I don’t get the chance to grab the attention of the President of the United States every day, and I have a few things I would like to say to him, so I am using this opportunity to write him a letter.
Mr. President, thank you for visiting our university. I hope you get the opportunity to take in some of the great things about our campus and the City of Bowling Green while you’re here (try some stuffed bread sticks from Campus Pollyeyes.)
I am 35 years old, so I am not the typical student on campus, but I think I am indicative of something that’s going on in America right now.
Like myself (and my wife, who is currently a law school student), many Americans my age are returning to college to get a degree to (hopefully) be able to provide a better future for their families.
We are doing this because all our lives we have been told that getting an education and working hard will lead to a life in the middle class, where we might not be rich, but we will not have to live with a constant fear of going under either.
I am thankful for Pell Grants and scholarships that are available to me, but I am incurring a mountain of student loan debt to attend school here with only a hope that there will be a job waiting for me when I am through.
If I cannot find a job with my degree when college is over, then instead of lifting me from poverty, college will have effectively sunk me deeper into it.
Something about that seems fundamentally wrong.
Lifting our brothers and sisters out of poverty is the greatest challenge we face as a country, and allowing people to become indentured servants in exchange for an education is not the way to do it.
There should be programs (not one, but many) that help older, nontraditional students go back to school without costing them so much money to repay their student loan debt that any extra money earned from a higher-paying salary is offset.
I believe poverty is something that concerns you too, Mr. President, as I have seen you propose bills like the American Jobs Act that would help to put people back to work.
I have also seen your opposition in the Congress shoot your ideas down, which is why I hope my fellow citizens will not only reelect you, but give you a Congress that is willing to compromise and work with you.
If Americans do that, then I ask you to please try again with the jobs bill, and also help to champion other congressional bills that would help to recreate the middle class in America, like the Private Student Loan Bankruptcy Act of 2011. This bill would amend the U.S. bankruptcy code to allow those forced to file bankruptcy to also file on qualified student loans taken from private lending institutions.
Nobody wants to file for bankruptcy, but if you’re in a position in which you need to do it, it’s probably because of one of four things: student loan debt, credit card debt, mortgage foreclosure, or doctor bills.
Not including any one of those debts as dischargeable takes the teeth out of bankruptcy and hurts poor people who need to file for it.
I know there are some people who refuse to even hear your words before rejecting your ideas, and while I’m sure that we share the wish that they could see the bigger picture a little clearer, with all due respect, sir, you can no longer worry about their opinions.
They are never going to give you the credit and respect you deserve, so tune them out. If regular folks can tell you are trying to help them, they will support you. Why do you think we still love Bill Clinton?
This reminds me: Please return income tax rates to the Clinton-era rates.
The mega-rich will not be happy for a while, but once the economy is doing well again, they will thank you for it.
Right now, they’re demonizing you, anyway.
Also, I am not at all in favor of multimillion dollar corporations getting out of their tax responsibilities, but if you can lure overseas businesses to America through tax incentives, please do so (though with a system of checks and balances in place to protect consumers).
In conclusion, Mr. President, I have been a supporter and fan of yours since I first saw your Democratic National Convention speech in 2004, and I support you 100 percent in November.
One reason for this is because I feel like you know what it is like to do without.
A lot of people are doing without right now, Mr. President, and to win this election you need to do something that your opponent cannot; to show the people that you remember what it is like to do without.
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