Sestak answers student questions

Congressman Joe Sestak answered questions from Pitt News readers after a rally in the Steel City… Congressman Joe Sestak answered questions from Pitt News readers after a rally in the Steel City on Saturday.  Sestak, a Democrat, is running for U.S. Senate against Republican Pat Toomey.

TPN: What do you want to do specifically, if elected, to help out college students?

Sestak: First when they graduate, to have a job. The amount that don’t because of the damage that had been done by the Toomey-Bush team is enormous. It’s wrong and they’re going to become dispirited …

So first I want to make sure small businesses are going to get a 15 percent tax cut for every job they create …

Now with debts with student loans, [students] will never have to pay more than 10 percent out of their pocket, more than 10 percent of their income. We got that out of the education committee and signed into law. What we also want to make sure happens is that we continue to have this health care bill that people can stay on to the health care of their parents until they’re 26.

Also what we want to do to decrease the cost of college as they stay in it is get through the Senate — which we didn’t get through — a piece of legislation from my committee that says, ‘Wait a moment. We’re giving Pell Grants and Perkins Loans to these schools we want you to publicize why are your costs going up so much? Is it in salaries? Infrastructure? What’s it in? Conferences?’

So that by transparency, we can start to have people say ‘Whoa I don’t want to go to that school if that’s how the costs are being treated … ’

More than anything else, I want to make sure for those who are already in college, when they step out, they are not burdened into bankruptcy. That’s why we capped how much they have to pay on their student loans.

TPN: How do you intend to create jobs for Pennsylvanians and college students here so that they don’t have to move elsewhere for jobs?

Sestak: Having Washington change so they give the focus of their legislation to small businesses.

For example, Congressman Toomey when he was on the Small Business Committee slashed the small business administration budget in half.

I’ve been on the Small Business Committee. I’m the vice chairman. We’ve now reversed [Toomey’s actions.]

[Toomey] focuses on wall street and large corp and waits for wealth to trickle down. Wealth is driven up by small businesses.

How do you think we’d ever want to torpedo our economy again by privatizing social security?

He wants to take that and put it in Wall Street and let the broker take the security out of social security. Do you think that a broker is going to walk up and say ‘I’m sorry senior I lost your savings but I’ll back it up?’ The only wealth security that happens is for that broker.

TPN: How would you reform social security?

Sestak: Easy, sit right there and realize that we need to preserve the benefits of social security.

So you sit back and you say Congressman Toomey, you let the majority of tax cuts go to the top 1 percent, the wealthiest of the wealthy, and after you did that you didn’t even pay for it. It added two trillion to the national debt …

Why don’t we go back to the years where the top 1 percent, during the Clinton administration, just paid their tax rate then, and we created 23 million jobs. That would keep social security absolutely solvent for 75 years, and that’s just one way to do it.

TPN: If you were elected to the Senate, how would you try to get that cost transparency for universities through?

Sestak: Reach across the aisle. In the first two years when I was down in the House of Representatives I had more piece of legislation passed than any other congressman of my class.

TPN: How do you feel about the Tea Party?

Sestak: I think people are upset, concerned and I respect that. But there are elements in it that are too extreme, and Congressman Toomey supports them and I don’t agree. I don’t agree with them, but I respect those in the Tea Party whose lives were slammed.

Representatives from Toomey’s campaign could not be reached for comment. The deadline for voter registration is today. The election is Nov. 2.

Visit pittnews.com for a short video of the interview and a separate, complete recording of the 17-minute interview.