• Rep. Ro Khanna is sounding the alarm for his party ahead of what could be a brutal midterm season.
  • He pushed back against criticism that student debt relief would benefit the well-off.
  • Khanna is urging Biden to prioritize passing a slimmer Build Back Better plan by August.

Rep. Ro Khanna of California is an influential House progressive — and he's been busy sounding the alarm for his party lately. He spent much of the past week criss-crossing the nation and speaking to young people ahead of the November midterms, a voting bloc Democrats are struggling with.

Democrats are bracing for a tough election season with rising prices for groceries, gas, and housing eating into many Americans' paychecks. They fear their two major accomplishments in 2021 — the stimulus and bipartisan infrastructure laws — are getting drowned out from relentless Republican attacks. Many are anxious about their failure to pass a social and climate spending package last year and inability to deliver on more of their agenda.

Khanna argues Democrats can stem brutal political losses by making a smaller climate bill their "biggest priority" and forgiving at least $10,000 in student debt, fulfilling a pair of pledges that President Joe Biden campaigned on. He says that could help turn out young voters to salvage their thin majorities in the House and Senate.

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

It sounds like you spent some time with young voters across the country this past week. What did they tell you about what Democrats need to accomplish ahead of the midterms?

Very clear, and very passionate, they expect the Democrats to deliver on student debt relief. They say this is something we promised, the president promised. We have to deliver at least $10,000. I'm for up to $50,000 for working families and students who are working class but at least deliver the $10,000.

Second, they say you have to pass something on climate. This is why we came out to vote. And we face huge challenges that the current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report highlights. They think this is our chance to live up to the rhetoric, a bold moonshot on renewable energy, ending subsidies for oil and gas companies. This is something on young people's minds.

So I would say those are the two things that came up again and again. Then healthcare came up too in terms of the costs people face for doctor's visits or treatment. But student loans and climate is something that they expect us to deliver before the midterms.

On the student loan piece: Biden campaigned on a pledge to forget $10,000 in student debt. That hasn't happened yet. There's been an extension to the student loan pause numerous times instead. I'm wondering why you think the administration has dragged its feet on that campaign promise, when it's had multiple chances to fulfill it for younger voters.

There is a false narrative that somehow working class voters or the 60% of Americans who haven't gone to college are against this. That's just wrong. First of all, some of the debt is for vocational school, debt for getting a credential. So the debt forgiveness we're talking about is not just for community college or college, we're talking about debt forgiveness for the trades, for vocational education as well.

Secondly, a lot of people who may not have gone to college themselves, a number of them have hopes that their their kids make it. That doesn't mean that the kids have to do that. There are very honorable, highly paid professions that don't require college. But some of them either want their kids or know a cousin who are doing that. They don't want someone to do that to be tens of thousands of dollars in debt. They think that's wrong.

So when you actually talk to a lot of voters who themselves haven't gone to college, I get the sense that they're totally fine with that debt being forgiven for those who have done vocational education, or trade school or college and are more concerned about how their wages may go up or how they have economic opportunity.

But they don't have an interest in ensuring that other people when they go to college or get higher education are gonna go into debt. That is crazy. What other country makes people going to debt $30,000, $40,000 to get education or to get certain skills? I don't know a single other country where you have to do that.

Actually another critique that's pretty common among economists: They argue that student debt relief would largely benefit professionals and people earning higher incomes. What's your response to that?

First of all, that's not true. A lot of the people who are getting student debt relief are first generation —  first in their families to go to college or from working or middle class backgrounds. I mean if you're a upper middle-class professional, as someone who's wealthy, you wouldn't have to take out the student loans. Your parents would be able to pay for it. So the very nature of someone who takes out student loans shows that they're not at the top of the economic pyramid.

It sounds like you think that $10,000 should be the floor in terms of what the administration should forgive. The Congressional Progressive Caucus put out executive order proposals for the administration, but it didn't specify a number.

The floor, absolutely.

You've been in touch with Senator Joe Manchin on Build Back Better. Some of your colleagues like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez complain that Manchin has moved the goalposts and made it really hard to clinch an agreement. I've also talked to him in the Capitol and he hasn't really committed to anything. Do you trust him to get to a deal?

I am hopeful and I believe that we have to do it. We have to come up with a package on a moonshot for renewable energy. In the past, he has been for a lot of the president's $500 billion climate proposal. And my hope is with the White House's leadership that's something we'll be able to deliver.

Do you think Manchin has negotiated in good faith after events of the past year?

All my conversations with him have been in good faith. But I think what we need here is the presidential leadership to say, 'This is what I want. I am going to do everything I can to get a bold climate agenda by the August recess. We need this moonshot and renewable energy to defeat the petro states. And we need it to make us less dependent on oil and gas companies, which are having record profits. We need it to save our planet. And I'm committed to it and I'm gonna do everything I can and then we're gonna get some kind of deal." I think that's what we need.

When it comes to getting getting a deal, it seems like even more trade-offs are going to be made. You've been okay with temporary fossil fuel subsidies to soften the blow from the energy shock we've seen from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Do you believe there's still a path to 50 votes on social initiatives like affordable childcare and universal pre K?

I think there have been in moments in the past. I don't know what the final deal will look like now. We have to try to get as much of it as we can.

That doesn't sound so optimistic, Congressman Khanna.

I can't speak for where it is at this point.

But if it means securing the climate parts of the bill, the clean energy tax credits that you've been so passionate about, are you okay with dropping affordable childcare and pre-K if it means getting these clean energy programs over the finish line?

I think climate needs to be our biggest priority. I'm open to making compromises to get there if we can get a bold climate package.

So you're open to it. How might your fellow progressives react to that trade-off?

I think many of them would be open for it because they understand this is our moment to do something. What is the alternative? Election outcomes are always unpredictable. What happens post-November? Are we really going to put the fate of our planet at risk with the outcome of an election?

This is our moment where we have both chambers and the presidency. We have to do something on climate. We didn't do anything on climate [that was] meaningful in Congress from 2009 to 2010 when we had both chambers and the presidency. We can't make the same mistake now.

What do you make of the proposals on the table to get inflation under control? It doesn't seem there's any easy levers to pull that'll lead to falling prices between now and November. Is it possible for Democrats to do anything substantial to get inflation under control before November?

Passing the Competes Act — which obviously I helped lead with Senator Schumer, Rep. Mike Gallagher, and Sen. Todd Young — will help that's building on America's capacity to produce. If we build semiconductors here, we reduce some of the shortages, we reduce the supply chain issues, we reduce the price of shipping.

But that is more over the course of a year or two, it could have a deflationary impact. But in the short term, I think a lot of it is the Fed that has control over the policy and making sure we are getting money in the pockets of working families so that they can pay their bills. To cap the cost of insulin, that's a way of reducing costs. I think some of the president's Build Back Better agenda, childcare — that's a big cost. We should look at what can reduce costs.

We're entering the midterm campaign season. I'm wondering about your perspective on how Democrats have talked about inflation. There's multiple issues causing rising prices right now. But have Democrats communicated well to voters, why they should give them another chance come November?

We need to emphasize the record job growth again and remind people of how things were when President Biden took office. The American Rescue Plan has worked — It's creating jobs. The American Rescue Plan helped reduce poverty, the infrastructure bill is a big investment, a down-payment in America's future for the next 10 years. And then we have to be empathetic about prices going up. We can't pretend that's not happening.

I'm going back to my district. I'm sitting down at a couple of grocery stores with people who just shop there and some of the workers. One of the things someone said to me, "I don't know the price of every different item. But I used to see my grocery bill used to be $100 now you can't get almost anything if you just spend $100. Now it's $140, $150."

Those are the types of conversations we need to have. So we can show we get it. We understand people who are hurting and then figure out what we can do to try to reduce prices. Obviously, those are challenges. A lot of that is on the Fed. The Fed's policies of buying back mortgages and securities probably went on too long.

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