Lower Prices Are at the Top of South Dakotans’ Holiday Wish-List
By Sen. John Thune
If you think you’re seeing the cost of everyday items skyrocket right before your eyes, you’re not imagining it. Prices across the United States have been steadily rising, and South Dakotans are paying more for food, utilities, and gas than they’ve had to in recent years. In fact, as a result of the policies that have been enacted this year, the country is facing the highest levels of inflation its seen in more than 30 years. We are coming off the most expensive Thanksgiving in history, and as we quickly approach Christmas, this holiday season is going force families to dig even deeper into their pocketbooks.
On average, inflation is costing a typical household $175 every single month. Utilities in South Dakota, including home heating costs, are projected to increase by up to 100 percent, consumer prices have hit a 30-year high, and the cost of beef is up 20 percent this year alone. It doesn’t end there. Folks are also being hit at the pump with seven-year-high gas prices. This is a serious problem for working Americans – or any American who relies on automobile transportation. And if you’re living paycheck to paycheck, these price increases may mean the difference between putting food on the table or paying an electricity bill. For coastal elites, $175 per month might not seem like a lot of money, but I’d encourage them to visit small-town South Dakota where the value of a dollar truly means something.
At its most basic level, inflation is created when there are too many dollars chasing too few of goods in the economy. Democrats helped trigger this ongoing inflation problem earlier this year when they decided to pour trillions of dollars of unnecessary government money into the economy – despite being warned by me and many others that their partisan $1.9 trillion spending bill would stoke inflation. Now, as inflation is clearly becoming a longer-term problem, Democrats are preparing to double down on the same kind of irresponsible government expansion with a partisan, multi-trillion-dollar tax-and-spending bill.
If you think inflation is bad now, the massive government spending the Democrats’ bill would authorize would all but guarantee a more persistent and widespread inflation problem. What’s just as concerning to me is that Democrats are actively trying to fool the American people by saying that their bill costs zero dollars. South Dakotans are smarter than that, and all of the various budget gimmicks Democrats are trying to use to disguise the true cost of their bill won’t fool them. This is not rocket science. Flooding the economy with more government dollars will not solve America’s inflation problem. It will make it worse.
As the holiday season gets fully underway, South Dakotans are increasingly worried about how these price increases are going to impact them. Everything from feeding their family to heating their home to making sure their son or daughter gets his or her desired toy for Christmas. The reality is, even if products are available on store shelves, they will likely cost more as a result of inflation. Unfortunately, it is not going away anytime soon, and if Democrats pass their reckless tax-and-spending spree, they’ll be doubling down on these failed policies. I will continue to fight on behalf of all South Dakotans to stop this misguided, irresponsible, and partisan tax-and-spending spree from becoming law.
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Gas prices are cool and all, but a drop in the bucket for those of us that have recent student loans. How about a bi-partisan attempt to lessen the effects of this generational tax of 10% on us? You have the left trying to do full forgiveness, now is the time to approach this with a compromise. I know John is a big party man, but it would be great to see him be a problem solver, it is surely worth more than $175 to most student loan holders.
Al, who held a gun to your head and forced you to borrow more than you should, to attend a college you couldn’t afford, to get an education you couldn’t get a sufficient return on?
It’s really simple: before applying to college, find out how much it’s going to cost. Then research the average starting salary of the career you hope to pursue. Figure out what you can realistically expect to earn your first year out of school.
The figure you come up with is the amount you should borrow to get the necessary education. The schools will be happy to charge you more and not tell you how difficult it will be to pay off $100,000-$250,000 of debt on a $50,000/year income. You can do it, but you won’t have much money left to buy anything else.
One of the things I am hearing from debtors is that the principal continues to grow from year to year in spite of payments. That means you aren’t making large enough payments. Send in larger amounts of money, not the minimum payment due. Get a second job. If you are young you can easily work 60 hours a week. Many have done it.
Another thing I am hearing is that people who have had difficulty making payments on what they borrowed to get a Bachelor’s degree decide the solution is to go to graduate school and defer payments until they get a Master’s or Doctorate. The debt continues to accrue interest and the student continues to borrow money. A few years later they have advanced degrees, and they are thousands of dollars deeper in debt. Stories like that really make me despair for the future of our civilization; our highly educated elite are financially illiterate.
The liberal Brookings Institution noted that “forgiving all student debt would be a transfer larger than the amounts the nation has spent over the past 20 years on unemployment insurance, larger than the amount it has spent on the Earned Income Tax Credit, and larger than the amount it has spent on food stamps.”
It didn’t happen, for a lot of reasons. First, the cost. And second, the fact that forgiving student debt would be a huge handout to higher-income people who borrowed money to go to school and then, with their education and degree, got high-paying jobs.
Federal student loans, also known as government loans, allow students and parents/guardians to borrow money for college directly from the federal government.
Stop Loaning Taxpayer Money – Problem Fixed
Government subsidy is what’s made college so expensive. Federalizing student debt took away the economic incentives to monitor loans. If someone can’t answer these questions and come up with a basic ROI statement on their degree, they have no business going to college:
* Why do you think you need to go to college?
* What are you going to study?
* How much is it going to cost?
* How much of that cost can be offset by scholarships?
* What will you do with it long term?
* If you have to take out loans How cheap are you willing to live both during and after college to pay it off?