Fox host Will Cain compares student relief to giving heroin to someone going through withdrawals
“It would be like someone who is addicted to heroin who is going through horrendous withdrawals. And there's a certain person in the room who says, well, the only thing we can do to do away with these withdrawals is give them another bump of heroin.”
Published
Citation From August 24, 2022, Fox News, The Faulkner Focus
SANDRA SMITH (FOX ANCHOR): Will, I can only imagine what you have to say about this. But The Wall Street Journal takes it on and basically makes the case it will undermine all these alleged efforts by Congress to bring prices down for the American people writing this: "Student loan forgiveness is an inflation expansion act." "But if he does forgive student debt, it will expose the hollowness of the Democrats' anti-inflation posturing." "The party these days is about spending ever more money without restraint (except for defense)."
Will, It is that simple. Spending is what has gotten us here and spending more will make matters worse. To you now.
WILL CAIN (FOX NEWS HOST): Yes. And so the word – the operative word that you just used, Sandra, was alleged when referring to the Inflation Reduction Act. This should do away with the concept that it was an Inflation Reduction Act. That was simply a fraud. That was mislabeling. That was bait-and-switch. That would have been outlawed. That is outlawed in most consumer transactions. It was never the purpose of that act to be reduction in inflation. In fact, we knew because just days later, Sandra, you know, almost every single media institution began to parrot the lines of the administration that it's actually a climate change bill.
But, look, we don't have to peer into their language use. Now, we just look at their motivations, because this bill, this proposed bill would, as everyone recognizes, extend hyper-inflate inflation, just showing that the motivations were never to actually help average Americans out there with the cost of groceries. It is to play to a constituency. And that constituencym in your lead-in, Sandra, what's fascinating to me, what really stood out was that report for that statement from the NAACP.
And so the NAACP is recognizing, hey, this hurts the average Black voter and truthfully it hurts the average American, meaning the blue-collar American, the non-college graduate American who will pay for this bill.
And so what's the constituency, I ask you? It increasingly looks like some type of elite or aspirational elite, largely white, college-educated liberal voter who wants their relief, who wants their support from the government bureaucracy.
SMITH: It's hard to digest this. College costs – real versus adjusted for inflation and you just see these prices continually going higher.
So, Will, if you do fall into the category in this country of somebody's who is happy to have your debt waived and paid for by other Americans, you're going to have to deal with this sooner or later whether it's your children or your grandchildren. What does this do to address those soaring costs? Why aren't we talking about that?
CAIN: Look at that chart. That is actually stunning.
And by the way, so Sandra, nothing I just said should be read as someone who thinks that what's going on in college with cost and by the way the return on investment of a college degree is acceptable, that it is just and appropriate market forces. It is most certainly not. And it's basic law of economics, that we should have understood by now: If the government subsidizes something and makes payment responsible for a third party, meaning the consumer and the seller aren't actually the true transaction there, you get rising costs.
Healthcare is the exact same thing as college education, and it is hyperinflationary just like education. So the appropriate – I've struggled with this, Sandra. What's the metaphor for forgiving college debt? It would be like someone who is addicted to heroin who is going through horrendous withdrawals. And there's a certain person in the room who says the only thing we can do to do away with these withdrawals is give them another bump of heroin.
SMITH: Mhmm.
CAIN: So, this bill would only serve to hurt the long-term equation.
SMITH: Yeah.
CAIN: Which is, it would rise the cost of college once again.
SMITH: Because then the forgiveness down the road will have to be bigger and bigger and bigger, to your point.
CAIN: This is a ten-thousand dollar bump to universities.