SB 106-05: New Great Society Act (Passed)

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The payroll tax provisions might conflict with how the healthcare payroll tax was implemented. I need to look at the details when I get home.

I have concerns about the overall package as well, and expound tonight.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

e. The subsidy will be paid for using the existing revenues for the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and Medicare. The Medicare Payroll Tax will be renamed the Health Care Payroll Tax and increased from 1.45% to 2.50% on employees and employers, for a total of 5%.

I am not sure if this OG Medicare Payroll tax was rolled into that one above in the referenced RL law. But if it is that would need to be accounted for.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I'd like to thank the gentleman from Oregon for introducing this bill. He deserves full credit for initiating this proposal, and I'm proud to throw the full support of my administration behind this bill.

I had the opportunity to proofread the bill prior to its introduction, and while it would already go very far in equalizing opportunities for students, families, and working Atlasians, I wanted to use the education portions as an opportunity to have an open discussion about addressing the root causes of student debt.

In most countries abroad where college is "free", and I heavily emphasize the quotation marks, there exists a fundamentally different understanding of what college is for. Most European colleges do not provide the special, 'fun' amenities that Atlasian students take for granted as part of the college experience. Moreover, these colleges do not provide room and board. Students must be sponsored by family or find work in order to pay for housing.

The tuition cap, I believe, is one of the most effective ways to draw a long-term solution to the student debt crisis in conjunction with the Pell Grant expansion. I had also proposed a cap or freeze specifically on executive pay, but the tuition cap should help us lower the burden on students by incentivizing less college spending that does not directly pertain to improving or renovating classes and school technology.

The bill, as we can see, funds these new expenditures with modest increases in the payroll tax.

I am very proud of the work Senator WD has done with me and my administration, and I urge the Senate to pass this crucial infrastructure for shared prosperity and a great, moral society.

A couple of questions about the tuition cap. Should it be indexed to general inflation? Also do we have authority to mandate the cap in this fashion? When I suggested such some months ago, it was in the context of conditioning financial aid, seeking to leverage the vast cadre of students and real dollars that come with them to keep prices down (which should deter a school from just rejecting all financial aid entirely since that was a concern of that approach).

How will fees be treated, especially if institutions jack up fees to ridiculous levels to circumvent the tuition cap?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Yea if you don't at least cap the fee inflation if not the top line fees themselves, then they will get ballooned to make up for the lost tuition inflation.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Another amendment proposal; remember that like the last one, I cannot officially submit amendments and so a senator must sponsor it.

Section VII. Tuition Cap

For students enrolled in a Community College, HBCU, Institution of Higher Education, Public 4-year Institution of Higher education, Tribal College or University, 2-year Tribal College or University, 4-year Tribal College or University, the tuition total amount, including tuition and fees, owed by any individual student shall not exceed $8,000 per year.

The Vice President and I have been discussing expanding UBI to single adults and couples without children. If there is support in this chamber to expand UBI beyond parents, I would support that, but we're definitely going to need to reduce the UBI benefit extension by at least half ($1500, but I won't rule out keeping the amount at $1000 if that is necessary for this bill's package).

Wealthies do not need this money though, so this is still technically not a Yang-style UBI program.

I don't support UBI, only in extreme circumstances. It's wasteful spending and we can't afford increasing the deficit whatsoever.

You propose new spending bills all the time that don't raise taxes or cut spending elsewhere.

If only there was some mechanism that could prevent such.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Nay

Its time to Reindustrialize Main Street.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Nay