On Tuesday Dec. 19, the American people were cheated.Congress failed to do what they were elected to do: put the people first.

The ‘Tax cuts and Jobs Act’ is the Trump administration’s stab at determining who pays what, and how much they pay within our country. The current government tends to prioritize business owners and corporations, so naturally the tax bill reflects these sentiments

The bit of relief that low income families have from student loans, the student loan interest deduction, will be repealed. It had allowed those who had payed up to $2,500 in interest on their student loans to deduct that money from their taxes. Without this deduction, it will be significantly more difficult to pay off student loans.
We, the youth of America, are a generation burdened by debt. The  ominous-sounding term “student loans” haunts us every time we contemplate college and every time we see our parents work to pay them off.

A statistic from Collegeboard shows that from 1987 to 2017, the average price of a four year public college has risen from about $3,190 to about $9,970. Scholarships, savings and work studies can only get a student so far. Especially now, due to another feature of the tax bill that will have financial aid from work studies taxed as income. The sad truth is that the price of education is rising, and low income families will be left behind.

The American society has a perception that people who don’t attend college are lazy or stupid and ultimately inferior. This is not the reality, of course. College education is difficult to obtain, no matter how clever and hardworking a person may be.

This is hardly a concern compared to other effects of lacking higher education. Without having gone to college, it’s increasingly difficult to actually get a job. If higher education is treated as a necessity for hiring, should it not be treated as a right for all people?

America can only function as a nation as long as its workforce does. But the rising price of education and rising standards of employment leaves a gap, and falling into that gap are low income families. By excluding some from the workforce, this country does itself a disservice. Nobody’s right to contribute should be disregarded.