The Military-Student-Debt Complex
Students in an Army prep course stand at attention. (AP Photo/Sean Rayford)
GOP war hawks slam Biden initiative for “undermining” Pentagon efforts to prey on desperate young people.
by Jordan Uhl
Amid a brutal year for military recruiting, conservative war hawks are openly fretting that President Joe Biden’s announcement last week of a one-time means-tested student debt cancellation will undercut the military’s ability to prey on desperate young Americans.
“Student loan forgiveness undermines one of our military’s greatest recruitment tools at a time of dangerously low enlistments,” Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) tweeted shortly after the announcement.
In the six years since Banks first ran for Congress, he has taken more than $400,000 from defense contractors, weapons manufacturers, and other major players in the military industrial complex. Corporate political action committees for Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, L3Harris Technologies, and Ultra Electronics have each donated tens of thousands of dollars to Banks, according to FEC data analyzed by OpenSecrets. He now sits on the House Armed Services Committee, which oversees the Department of Defense and United States military.
Members of the committee have already collectively received more than $3.4 million from defense contractors and weapons manufacturers this election cycle.
Banks’ admission highlights the way the student debt crisis has been exploited by the military industrial complex. By saying the quiet part out loud, Banks is finally speaking the truth about how military recruiters use the G.I. Bill — the 1944 law that awards a robust benefits package to veterans — as a remedy for the cost of higher education to convince young people to enlist.
“To have members of Congress openly imply that the answer to this is to actually exacerbate hardship for poor and working-class youth is, actually, the best thing for young Americans to see,” Mike Prysner, an anti-war veteran and activist, told The Lever. “It proves their reasons for not joining are totally valid. Why allow yourself to be chewed up and spit out in service of a system that cares so little for you and your well being?”
Biden’s initiative will cancel up to $10,000 of federal student loan debt for people who make under $125,000 annually, plus an additional $10,000 for these borrowers who received a Pell Grant in college. The program is estimated to eliminate roughly $300 billion in total debt, reducing the outstanding student debt nationwide from $1.7 trillion to $1.4 trillion.
According to the College Board’s 2021 Trends In College Pricing Report, the average cost for annual tuition and fees at public four-year colleges has risen from $4,160 to $10,740 since the early 1990s — a 158 percent increase. At private institutions, average costs have increased 96.6 percent during that same period, from $19,360 to $38,070.
Biden’s student debt cancellation plan was for the most part celebrated in liberal circles as a step in the right direction, although many pointed out that debt forgiveness needed to go much further to address the nationwide crisis.
“If Young Americans Can Access Free College… Will They Volunteer For The Armed Forces?”
Banks’ communications director, Buckley Carlson (son of conservative Fox News host Tucker Carlson), did not respond to a request for comment — but the congressman’s comments reflect a popular mindset among Army brass and conservative hawks.