Latest Salon Interview with Liz Warren Even More Nauseating Than Usual

Salon political columnist
Thomas Frank spoke
with his dream candidate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, in a
hard-hitting interview that posed tough questions like, “Is there
anything someone can do about all the things we’re describing,
short of being president?” Wow, he went there.

To his credit, Frank did go after President Obama for being a
“disappointment” on the issues Frank cares about: financial
regulation, prosecuting Wall Street bankers, etc. Warren agreed
that Obama let Wall Street off the hook too easily, though she did
praise the president for getting her consumer protection agency
approved.

The rest of the interview consists of Frank telling Warren how
brilliant she is, and Warren spouting off her usual faux-populist
screed. (Reminder:
Warren is in favor of the Export-Import Bank.) The conversation
eventually turned to higher education affordability:

Is it time to do something about college
tuition?

Absolutely. Yes it is. But let’s get the right frame on this.
Because I think this is really important, and it’s the right
question to ask. But start with this: three out of four kids in
college are in public universities. A generation ago, state support
for public universities was strong enough that three out of four
dollars to educate those kids came from taxpayers and the family
had to make up the difference for the fourth dollar. Today, that
has basically reversed itself. That is, that the states are putting
up, just generally across the country, about one out of four
dollars and the families have got to come up with the other three
out of four dollars. This matters because it is the state
universities that are the backbone of access to higher education
for middle class families, and I think that’s the place you have to
start the conversation. I’m not going to let anybody off the hook,
but I think it’s the critical part of the conversation. And I say
this — it’s like I talk about in the book — this is personal for
me. I graduated from a commuter college that cost $50 a semester in
Texas.

Warren is technically correct: Public funding for higher
education has generally declined across the country. But large
state universities are still raking in cash. Warren’s own solution
to the college affordability program—massive
loan subsidization—is one of the main reasons the price is
still climbing. Universities can keep jacking up the price as long
as the government keeps finding ways to help students pay in the
short term while concealing the true cost from them until they are
already on the hook for it.

Doesn’t Warren want to go after rich CEOs (i.e., college
presidents) at corrupt crony corporations (i.e., public
universities) who extort consumers (i.e., students)? Only in the
private sector, it seems. When it comes to higher education
affordability, Warren is very much a part of the problem.

Full Salon interview
here.