The Senate bill would not let protesters who have been convicted of a crime get their student loans erased.
Republican senators in the U.S. have proposed a bill that would stop protesters who are convicted of a crime while protesting on U.S. college campuses from getting their student loans forgiven.
Multiple senators from Arkansas joined U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton in introducing the No Bailouts for Campus Criminals Act. The bill says that a college or university student who breaks any federal or state rule while protesting at a college or university would not be able to get their federal student loans forgiven, cancelled, waived, or changed.
The Centre Square reported that President Joe Biden’s administration has suggested new plans to forgive student loans that could cost taxpayers up to $1.4 trillion. This is despite the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court threw out Biden’s programme in June.
As anti-Semitic protests continue to happen on universities across the country, causing violence against Jewish students and the cancellation of in-person classes and graduations, the senators who are against Biden’s plans put forward the bill. Just in the last few weeks, hundreds of students across the country have been arrested on charges such as disturbing the peace, illegal trespass, alleged hate crimes, and violent acts.
People in the U.S. who never went to college or paid off their bills should not have to pay off other people’s student loans. Cotton said, “They shouldn’t have to pay back the loans of Hamas supporters who shut down and vandalised campuses.”
U.S. Rep. Brandon Williams, R-NY, who is sponsoring similar legislation in the House, said, “It’s ridiculous that violent campus protesters want respect, amnesty, and even takeaway food.” Our bill, which has support from both houses of Congress, makes sure that no student protester who is found guilty of a crime gets their student loans cancelled. The government will not give these crooks any money.
Cotton’s bill did not have any Democrats sign it. Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Cindy Hyde-Smith and Roger Wicker of Mississippi, Roger Marshall of Kansas, James Risch of Idaho, Mitt Romney of Utah, Marco Rubio of Florida, Tim Scott of South Carolina, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, and J.D. Vance of Ohio are all Republicans who have signed on as cosponsors.
Last month, Cotton led a group of 27 U.S. senators who asked the Justice and Education Departments to act right away on the “outbreak of anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist mobs on college campuses.”
“Restore order,” they said. “Prosecute the mobs who have made threats and used violence against Jewish students; revoke the visas of all foreign nationals (such as exchange students) who have helped promote terrorism; and hold school administrators accountable who have stood by and not protected their students.” This is what The Centre Square reported. The Centre Square reported at the time that the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights was looking into about 100 cases at schools and universities for what they called “discrimination involving shared ancestry” that was against Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
According to The Centre Square, violence and racism against Jews in the United States rose by almost 400% after the bombings by Hamas on Israel on October 7. Another study found that since then, violence on college campuses has grown and leaders have not been able to stop it.
Hamas, which stands for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (the Islamic Resistance Movement), was named a foreign terrorist organisation by the U.S. State Department in 1997. The National Counterterrorism Centre says, “It is the largest and most capable militant group in the Palestinian territories and one of the two main political parties in those territories.”
More than a dozen federal judges have said they will not hire Columbia University students after the school’s leaders let pro-Hamas camps set up on campus and then turned off in-person classes and cancelled graduation. The judges told The Centre Square that Columbia had turned into a “incubator of bigotry” against Jews.
Several Jewish groups have also sued Palestinian groups that they say work with Hamas and spread propaganda for the group. According to them, the First Amendment does not protect speech that calls for the death of Jews or violence against Jews.
It was also revealed by The Centre Square that Cotton’s bill was introduced after almost all Ivy League schools got failing grades for antisemitism. Harvard had a student group that held a pro-Palestinian activist with ties to Hamas. Brown is thinking about pulling its money out of Israel. And Yale had a pro-Hamas protester stab the editor of its student paper in the eye.
