Presumed Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry (Mass.) promoted his plan to reduce tuition costs during a conference call Tuesday with 127 college reporters from across the country as part of his “Change Starts with U” college tour.
Throughout the conference, Kerry said youth are important to America and said they must exert the power they deserve.
“Young people have this enormous power, and they have to embrace it and go out and use it,” he said. “It was mostly young people that drove the civil rights movement, drove the environment movement, drove the peace movement and drove the women’s movement.
“If everybody just walks away and says it doesn’t make a difference, then you empower people who have money … they get control. Young people have to reemerge as a political force in America.”
Kerry began the session by blasting President Bush’s fiscal integrity, especially in the area of college tuition, which he said has increased more than 28 percent over the past three years.
“Two hundred twenty-thousand young people have been priced out of college,” he said. “The administration has made its own fundamental choice, which is to cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans” while reducing spending for federal grants and loans for prospective college students.
Bush’s tax cuts have put an unnecessary burden on students and produced economic turmoil, Kerry said.
“George Bush’s tax cut for the wealthy is a tuition tax for the students,” he said, adding that America is experiencing “the greatest job loss in the history of the country since Herbert Hoover was president.”
Kerry outlined a number of reforms that would help college-age Americans afford tuition and find jobs after graduating. He said to “reduce the impact of the last few years” he would offer $50 billion in tax credits.
Kerry added that his ability to create jobs, especially for recent graduates, would draw more youths to the polls.
“When people get out of college, they want a high-paying, decent job,” he said. “We’re going to grow 10 million new jobs over the course of the next four years, and they’re going to be the kind of high-technology, high-end, high-paying jobs that people need on graduation from college.”
Kerry also discussed his plan to offer college tuition assistance to any students who have committed themselves to two years of community service and encouraged people to enlist in the military.
Motivating people to join the military “will be done by having a more sensible foreign policy where young people don’t feel as if that their leadership is making irresponsible decisions based on their presence in the military,” he said. “I think that if we have a more reasonable approach to our relationship with the rest of the world, I don’t think we’ll have any problems at all” with enlistment.
Kerry also fielded a question about the future of social security, a program some say will be bankrupt before today’s college students are eligible to receive a single check.
“I will guarantee you that social security will be there for your generation and the next,” he said. “If we move our economy forward … we’re not going to have a massive problem with social security. I do not intend to privatize social security the way George Bush wants to do it. If we roll back the tax cut and begin to be responsible fiscally, social security will be just fine.”
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