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President Biden Announces New Student Loan Debt Relief; Chaos on Capitol Hill. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired October 04, 2023 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[13:00:46]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Chaos on Capitol Hill, as Republican hard- liners get their wish, Kevin McCarthy losing his gavel, but now the House is without a speaker amid a slew of contentious issues, including another potential government shutdown.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: Plus, Donald Trump back in court, this time under a new gag order. But he is still attacking prosecutors, as his former accountant gets grilled on the witness stand. We are live at the courthouse.

And a historic new strike, thousands of health care workers walking off the job. What they're asking for and what it means for patients.

We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

SANCHEZ: Divided and searching for a new speaker.

Right now on Capitol Hill, the race to replace Kevin McCarthy is heating up. This morning, Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan became the first to throw his hat into the ring, publicly announcing he will run for the speakership. And Republican sources tell us there are currently at least two others considering running, Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Oklahoma's Kevin Hern.

Right now, candidates are vying for support behind closed doors and they will make their case before the full conference at the Republican forum next Tuesday, with a full House vote for speaker expected by Wednesday.

Let's take you now live to Capitol Hill and CNN's Lauren Fox, who joins us live.

So, Lauren, while Jim Jordan jockeys for support, he's downplaying concerns that he may be too far to the right to win over the moderates in his conference.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, the maneuvering, though, already well under way, Boris.

And one thing that became very clear as some of these potential candidates and Jim Jordan and official candidates spoke with members of the Texas delegation is that this race for speaker is very much alive right now, as many Republicans are hoping and arguing that it is important for the Republican Conference to unite quickly.

That, in fact, was the message from Jim Jordan, but he is already warning that, on some issues, he is still going to be fighting for conservatives. Here he is on the issue of Ukraine funding.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: What about Ukraine? Are you willing to move forward with an aid package for Ukraine if you're speaker?

REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH): I'm against that. What I understand is, at some point, we're going to have to deal with this appropriation process in the right way. We're going to try to do that in the next, what would it be, down to 41 days.

The most pressing issue on Americans' minds is not Ukraine. It is the border situation and it is crime on the streets.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOX: There are also a lot of eyes on the number two Republican in the House of Representatives, Steve Scalise, the majority leader, and whether or not he is going to get in this race.

We know he's been gauging support from colleagues. He also spoke with the Texas delegation. And our colleague Manu Raju just spoke with Kevin Hern and asked him if he is officially throwing his name in the hat to be the next speaker of the House. Kevin Hern, the leader of the Republican Study Committee, he said right now he's just looking at this, that, no, he is not officially a candidate.

But, obviously, it's still early. But you want to start making those asks, you want to start making those moves if you're really serious about trying to get this top job in the House -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: Yes, a busy week for these potential next speakers before the full vote, potentially as soon as next Wednesday.

Lauren Fox, thank you so much -- Pamela.

BROWN: All right, I will take it from here.

I want to talk more about this with Republican strategist Alice Stewart and Democratic strategist Maria Cardona. They co-host the podcast "Hot Mics From Left to Right."

All right, so I want to game this out.

Alice, would Jim Jordan, a hard-right, strong ally of Donald Trump, have enough votes from moderates to be speaker, in your view?

ALICE STEWART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Many of the Republicans I'm talking with feel as though he would not, and the reason being, look, he is very strong and committed on the issues that he fights hard for. He's fought really hard for this impeachment against Joe Biden. He's

fought really hard for reducing government spending. But he has, given the fact he's super passionate about some of these issues, alienated some of the more middle-of-the-road Republicans.

[13:05:04]

Many I speak with say Steve Scalise would actually have a better shot, given that he is appealing to more people, he has a bigger staff, he has more of a ability to -- you really have to kind of campaign for this.

The problem is with him -- his health concerns are a factor with him moving forward, but he really has the steam to move forward. People are frustrated. They're really frustrated with what Matt Gaetz did. And that, in and of itself, may unify people. They're frustrated that we have one person that came in, after all the work Republicans have done to gain the majority.

One person bulldozed the entire thing. And we have man-child Matt Gaetz telling his seven dwarfs, hold my beer while I go beat up Kevin McCarthy because I don't like him. Now it's destroyed our chance to talk about the GOP agenda. It's destroyed our chance to take the fight to Biden and his failed policies.

And here we are spending time looking for a new speaker, instead of governing.

BROWN: And the reality is, now Democrats could get a less moderate speaker than McCarthy, like Jim Jordan, for example.

Do you think that Democrats are going to come to regret not stepping in to save McCarthy?

MARIA CARDONA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: No, absolutely not, Pam.

It was not the Democrats' job to save the chaotic GOP. That is exactly what they were hired to do by the American people. They were hired to govern. But we all knew from the very beginning that that was going to be next to impossible for them to achieve.

McCarthy sold his soul back in January, as he went into a corrupt bargain that now was the one who isolated him and essentially delivered his debacle, because what he did was, he agreed to this ridiculous rule that anybody could come in and do a motion to vacate to kick him out.

And everyone knew it was going to be Matt Gaetz, right? We all knew that this day was going to happen, as historic and frankly tragic as it is for the whole country. No one is celebrating this. No one on the Democratic side is celebrating this. This is horrific. It's embarrassing on the international stage, and it does not do any good for the American people.

But it does give Democrats a chance to demonstrate how the extremists on the Republican side are the ones who are running their part of the party, and it does no good for the American people, and that they then, in fact, don't deserve to be given the power to govern as a majority.

BROWN: And there's no expectation, right, that these extremists will give up on those demands for the next speaker.

CARDONA: That's exactly right.

BROWN: And will happen then? Will Republicans all come on board to vote for another potential speaker who makes all these concessions in order to become speaker?

STEWART: Well, I can guarantee, in the conversations I have had, one of the aspects that will not be included in the horse-trading for the next speaker, they are not going to agree to have one person come forward with the motion to vacate, because they know that they would be in the same situation Kevin McCarthy has been in ever since he took over the gavel, someone like Matt Gaetz running around the Capitol with the motion to vacate.

That's just not going to happen. And the irony here is, Gaetz has been so frustrated with McCarthy for doing what you're supposed to do, work across the aisle, find bipartisan deals, which is what McCarthy did to keep the government open, working with Democrats to get a bipartisan deal.

Gaetz was frustrated with him for working with Democrats. He only got this done because he worked with Democrats to get it done. And so that's the frustration. We need to look at the fact that bipartisanship is not a bad word, and we need someone that lead the Republicans, that can work with Democrats to -- A, to keep the government open, and to work to, in my view, reduce spending, focus on securing the border, as well as providing the necessary aid to Ukraine, which is top of mind.

CARDONA: But here's another problem with what Kevin McCarthy did. Yes, Matt Gaetz was his undoing, but Kevin McCarthy put himself in that situation.

He can't be trusted clearly by either side, right? That's one of the reasons why Democrats did not feel like they had to in any way come to his rescue. He lied. He went back on his word. Back in May, he agreed to a deal with the White House, with President Biden, and with Democrats when we raised the debt ceiling to keep the spending where it was, so that there would be no threat of a government shutdown.

He lied to the Democrats' faces. Then he made some other deals with Gaetz, and Gaetz said that he lied to him. This is somebody who the Democrats could not trust, not just on that, but then we saw, on January 6, when he first came out to say, Donald Trump is guilty, Donald Trump did this and that for January 6, and he should be held accountable.

What does he do? Three days later, he goes to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring. And then he focuses on bringing an impeachment of Joe Biden based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever. So, Kevin McCarthy built his own -- dug his own grave.

But then the next one who's going to come along, we don't know whether he's going to be able to be trusted or not, and I don't know that he, that person, is going to be able to walk that line of placating the MAGA extremists, because it is more than Matt Gaetz, and also making sure that he can deal with the moderates in his party.

[13:10:00]

BROWN: All right, Maria Cardona, Alice Stewart, we shall see how this all plays out. Thank you so much.

(CROSSTALK)

CARDONA: Thank you, Pam.

BROWN: Boris.

SANCHEZ: So, any minute now, President Biden is set to speak from the White House after announcing another $9 billion in student loan debt relief.

CNN's M.J. Lee is live for us at the White House with more.

So, M.J., what are we anticipating to hear from President Biden?

M.J. LEE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Boris, as you know very well, student loan debt relief has been a huge focus for this White House.

And you're right that the administration today announced additional cancellation for some 125,000 borrowers totaling, according to the administration, some $9 billion. And it really falls into several categories, including cancellation for borrowers who are public servants, debt relief for folks who have been making their payments for 20 years or more.

And then there's another category of cancellation for borrowers who have disabilities. Now, the timing of this announcement is pretty interesting, because do keep in mind it was several days ago that a pause on federal student loan payments that had been in place since March of 2020 -- so, really, we are talking about the onset of the pandemic -- that ended up being lifted.

So we are looking at millions of borrowers across the country who haven't had to make these payments in a number of years. They are now having to foot the bill and having to make these payments that they haven't had to pay for a number of years now.

An additional piece of context that is very important, too, of course, is that, over the summer, President Biden's student loan forgiveness program that was going to offer up to $20,000 in student loan debt relief, that ended up being struck down by the Supreme Court.

So we are seeing sort of a continuation of a patchwork of actions that the administration is trying to take to give some relief to people across the country. And according to the administration, so far, some $127 billion of loans have been canceled for some 3.6 million people.

And officials here at the White House say that they will continue to look for different ways to try to offer more relief. Of course, after this summer when the Supreme Court ended up again striking down this program, that was a huge priority for this administration.

SANCHEZ: We are anticipating the president's remarks coming soon. We will be watching them. We will bring them to you live.

So, M.J. Lee at the White House, please stand by.

Still plenty more news to come on CNN NEWS CENTRAL, including Donald Trump back in a Manhattan courtroom, this time with a gag order in place over his social media posts. But he hasn't stopped posting about the case. So what happens next?

Plus, more than 75,000 people have walked off the job in what is now the largest health care workers strike in American history. What it could mean for millions of patients across America.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:16:50]

BROWN: Speaking about student loan relief at the White House. Let's listen.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: But I remind everyone we have a lot of work to do. And the American people expect us to get it done.

The argument we reached was about what comes next. But we had an agreement. We reached an agreement over the weekend, funds for government only another 40 days. We cannot and should not again be faced with an 11th-hour decision of brinksmanship threatens to shut down the government.

And we know what we have to do. We -- and we got to -- we have to get it done in a timely fashion. More than anything, we need to change the poisonous atmosphere in Washington. We have strong disagreements, but we need to stop seeing each other as enemies.

We need to talk to one another, listen to one another, work with one another. And we can do that.

I join with Minority Leader Jeffers -- excuse me -- Jeffries -- in saying that our Republican colleagues remain committed to working in a bipartisan fashion. And we're prepared to do it as well, for the good of the American people.

Twice in the last six months, both houses came together on a bipartisan basis, once to avoid default, once to keep the government open. And while we should never have been in the situation in the first place, I'm grateful that leaders on both sides came together, including former Speaker McCarthy, to do the right thing.

Now, turning to student debt relief, when I ran for president, I vowed to fix our broken student loan program, because while a college degree is still the ticket to a better life, that ticket has become excessively expensive. Americans who are saddled with unsustainable debt in exchange for a college degree has become the norm.

Since, my administration has taken significant action to provide student debt relief to as many borrowers as possible as quickly as possible. That starts with making sure the existing system works in the way it was supposed to work for student borrowers.

We fixed what was called the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which was designed originally to make sure schoolteachers, firefighters, social workers, and other public servants can get their student loans forgiven if they make 10 years of payments and do 10 years of public service.

By the time I took office, that program had been placed for -- in place for nearly 15 years. But, because of red tape, only 7,000 borrowers had been helped. Well, today, thanks to the reforms, more than 700,000 borrowers have had their debts forgiven.

Just the other day, I spoke with Tanya (ph) and Chad, a married couple in their 50s who both work at public high school in Milwaukee. For years, they paid over $800 a month toward their student loans. It meant they couldn't pay -- put away any money for retirement.

And, this summer, thanks to fixes we made to the debt relief program for people in public service, Chad and Tanya's remaining balance was forgiven. Tanya said -- quote -- "The amount of relief it's given us is indescribable" -- end of quote.

Now they can finally start savings for retirement.

[13:20:02]

Next, we fixed what's called the income-driven payment -- repayment program. And here's how that works. If you have an undergraduate loan, after 20 years of straight paying, not missing paying the debt on a monthly basis, whatever's left of your loan is forgiven after 20 years.

But because of administrative failures, some people who did pay their loans for 20 years or more did not get the debt relief they'd earned. We fixed that and made sure borrowers got credit for every single payment they made.

As a result of these changes today, I'm announcing my administration has approved an additional $9 billion in relief for 125,000 borrowers in just the past few weeks under that program. With the latest debt cancellation, in total, my administration has canceled $127 billion in student debts for nearly 3.6 million Americans.

This kind of relief is life-changing for individuals and their families. But it's good for our economy as a whole as well. By freeing millions of Americans from the crushing burden of student debt, it means they can go and get their lives in order. They can think about buying a house. They can start a business. They can be starting a family.

This matters. It matters with their daily lives. This latest progress builds on other steps we have taken. We have made the largest increase in Pell Grants in over a decade, helping students in families making less than $60,000 a year get to college.

We have made additional improvements in the income-driven repayment programs. Before I took office, student borrowers would pay no more than 10 percent of their discretionary income on a monthly basis if they wanted to do it that way. But under my administration's plan, which is called SAVE plan, we reduced that to 5 percent for undergraduate borrowers.

And it's now the most generous repayment program ever. Under this plan, no one with an undergraduate loan today or in the future, whether at a community college or a four-year college, will have to pay more than 5 percent of their discretionary income to repay these loans.

That's income after you pay for necessities like housing, food and other necessities. You can sign up for the SAVE plan at studentaid.gov/save, studentaid dash -- studentaid.gov/save.

And, remember, if you keep up your payments after 20 years, whatever is left in those loans is forgiven. And we're still not done. As you might remember, last year I announced a major proposal for student debt relief. We were on the verge of providing more than 40 million Americans with real relief from their student debt. The money was literally about to go out the door.

But Republicans and elected -- Republican elected officials and special interests stepped up and sued us. And the Supreme Court sided with them, snatching from the hands of millions of Americans thousands of dollars in debt -- student debt relief that was about to change their lives.

As I said at the time, I believe the court's decision to strike down my student debt relief program was wrong, but I promised I wouldn't give up. Since then, my administration has been pursuing a new approach grounded under a different law, the Higher Education Act.

This act allows the secretary of education to compromise, waive, or release loans under certain circumstances. Last week, the Department of Education took a critical step in this process by identifying specific challenges that borrowers face in the current system, so we can move forward with a new rule to address these changes.

For example, there are many borrowers who have made payments for many years, but, because of interest, they still own more than they originally borrowed. My administration is doing everything it can to deliver student debt relief to as many as we can as fast as we can.

This is in contrast to House Republicans, who helped block the previous debt relief plan and nearly shut down the government over the extreme demands, which would have hurt hardworking families. But they had no problem with the Paycheck Protection Program, remember that, the PPP program during the last several years, which was designed to help business owners who lost money, which is legitimate, because of the pandemic.

Members of Congress got over hundreds of thousands of dollars in order -- because they lost -- their businesses lost money. It was a worthy program. But let's be clear. Some of the same elected Republicans or members of Congress who were strongly opposed to get relief to students got hundreds of thousands of dollars in relief for themselves to keep their businesses open.

Several members of Congress got over a million dollars, and all those loans were forgiven. The hypocrisy of this, I find stunning. I supported that program and I support the student debt program. My administration will continue to use every tool at our disposal to help ease the burden of student debt, so more Americans can be free to achieve their dreams.

[13:25:10]

It's good for our economy. It's good for our country, and it's going to change their lives. Thank you very much.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: On Speaker McCarthy, if I can, Speaker McCarthy, then- Speaker McCarthy, said that the two of you hadn't spoken directly in a long time.

Why is that? And are you committed to engaging more regularly with the next House speaker?

BIDEN: We had two agreements we shook hands with -- on. And I assumed he was working with -- I know he was working with the Democrats in the House and Senate.

It wasn't for me to do anything. If he wanted to talk to me, I was available. I'm available to whomever wants to talk to me.

But the idea that I was going to somehow convince McCarthy to change his view was not reasonable.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: Does the disarray on Capitol Hill after your conversation with allies yesterday worry you that you won't be able to deliver the aid that the U.S. has promised to Ukraine?

BIDEN: It does worry me.

And -- but I know there are a majority of members of the House and Senate in both parties who have said that they support funding Ukraine. With your -- I'm going to be announcing very shortly a major speech I'm going to make on this issue and why it's critically important for the United States and our allies that we keep our commitment.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: Mr. President, are you also concerned about the rest of your domestic and foreign policy initiatives being in peril because of what we saw happen yesterday, the dysfunction in Congress, the chaos that we saw on the House side?

Does that concern you in any way?

BIDEN: The dysfunction always concerns me.

The programs that we have argued over, we passed bipartisanly, I'm not concerned that they're going to all of a sudden come in and try to undo them, although there will be some. There will be some, I'm sure. There's a half-a-dozen or more extreme MAGA Republicans, Republicans who would like to eliminate just about everything I have done.

But I don't think that's going to get there.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: If I may, without additional funding, how long will the United States be able to support Ukraine?

BIDEN: We can support Ukraine in the next tranche that we need.

And there is another means by which we may be able to find funding for that. But I'm not going to get into that now.

QUESTION: Mr. President, have you promised President Zelenskyy ATACMS for Ukraine?

BIDEN: Say again?

QUESTION: Have you promised President Zelenskyy during his visit in the White House that you would provide ATACMS, the long-range missiles, for Ukraine?

BIDEN: I have spoken with Zelenskyy. And everything he's asked for, we have worked out.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: Tell us a little more about this speech you're going to give. What argument are you going to make?

(LAUGHTER)

BIDEN: Why don't you to wait and listen to it?

I'm going to make the argument that it's overwhelmingly in the interest of the United States of America that Ukraine succeed. And it's overwhelmingly in our interest. I have spent two-and-a-half years putting together coalitions that no one thought could be put together. And they have strengthened us across the board, not just as it relates

to Ukraine, whether it's Japan and South Korea or whether it's what's happening in Europe itself. And so I think that it's clear to the vast majority of the foreign policy community on both left and right that this has been a valuable exercise for the United States of America to increase the support we have around the world.

And what I don't want to do is -- we have put together our 50 nations, 50 nations supporting Ukraine. And we are the organizer of that. I met with -- don't hold me the exact number -- 16 or 17 yesterday in a long conversation and made the case that I knew that the majority of the American people still support Ukraine, and the majority of the members of the Congress, both Democrat and Republican, support it.

So I don't think we should let the gamesmanship, get in the way of blocking it.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: What's your advice to the next House speaker?

BIDEN: (OFF-MIKE)

BROWN: Hard to hear what he said there. That was President Biden speaking there at the White House answering reporters' questions about the ouster of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

And you heard there he talked about his concern about what this could mean for the U.S. commitment to give aid to Ukraine, although he said that there are potential other means to provide the funding for Ukraine and that he is going to give a major speech on the issue, saying that there is overwhelming -- it is overwhelmingly in our interest to provide that funding for Ukraine.

So, let's go back to Capitol Hill, where House Majority Leader Steve Scalise officially entered the speaker's race.

[13:30:00]