Minhaj, who hosts a political comedy show on Netflix called ‘Patriot Act,’ mixed humor with facts as he addressed the committee. “I may owe some of you guys royalties,” he said in reference to the name of his Netflix show. Minhaj later tweeted, “You know the student loan crisis is bad when I’m asked to testify about it.”
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On average, the committee members graduated college 33 years ago and paid an inflation-adjusted tuition of $11,690 per year. Today, the average cost of tuition at the same schools is almost $25,000 per year, Minhaj said, meaning tuition has increased 110 percent while wages have gone up only 16 percent.
“People aren’t making more money and college is objectively way more expensive,” Minhaj said. “We’ve put up a pay wall to the middle class.”
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Minhaj highlighted the dangers of predatory for-profit loan-servicing companies, which “have a history of misleading borrowers and pushing them into repayment plans that in some cases have cost individual borrowers tens of thousands of dollars in unnecessary interest,” he said. “The deck is stacked against student borrowers.”
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Minhaj concluded his testimony by asking Congress to treat student borrowers the way it has treated America’s biggest banks. “We know the government is capable of stepping in during a financial crisis,” he said. Repurposing a phrase used to describe the banks bailed out after the 2008 financial crisis, Minhaj said, “Forty-four million Americans: that is ‘too big to fail.’”
Navy Vet
Article URL : https://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/hasan-minhaj-testifies-before-congress/