Watch Hasan Minhaj Dunk On Congress For Their Inaction On The Student Loan Debt Crisis

Hasan Minhaj contains multitudes. In the same breath, he can make a joke about cake shows on Netflix, he can also berate Congress for their relative inaction on solving the student cash advance debt crisis that has left 44.7 million Residents of the
U.S. Saddled with a collective $1.56 trillion in debt, according to NBC News plus a 2018 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.


“This provide is sidelining millions of Residents of the United States. Folks are putting off marriage, kids, homeownership, and retirement — especially my generation,” Minhaj, the host and executive producder of Netflix's Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, instructed them Residence Financial Services Committee on September 10. He was invited to speak because he focused on student cash advance debt throughout an episode of his show in February 2019.


He pointed out that throughout that episode, he surveyed the people in attendance and noticed that the 200-person audience owed a collective $6 million in student cash advance debt.


“Now granted, our audience is mainly unemployed poli-sci majors, however that's still a lot of money,” Minhaj joked. There was not a lot of laughter by the committee.


He went on to prove the point that college has objectively just gotten more expensive by telling every one of the legislators on the committee how much they bought college once they attended and why much that would have cost today. “You paid less for your degrees,” Minhaj mentioned, adding that adjusting for inflation, from the time the committee members went to college to today, there has been “a 110 percent increase over a period of time whenever wages have gone up only 16 percent.”


“We’ve put up a paywall to the middle class,” the comedian mentioned before saying that Residents of the
U.S. Shouldn’t have to have a Netflix-style paywall for their lives. “That’s why we put our entire show for free on YouTube. It's also because you can’t find anything on Netflix. It's like the lost and noticed bin of entertainment,” he added. Again, not much laughter. It seemed no one in the room really knew what to do with any of his jokes, which is their loss and not his.


“I think it's an enormous problem that the youth of America have to bombard their preference rapper or pop musician and ask them to pay back their student loans,” Minhaj mentioned, adding: “They're not even asking for selfies anymore. Are you a fan of Taylor Swift? Are you a Swiftie? Even her fans have gone up to her and asked if she would pay off her student cash advances. That's how desperate student borrowers are.”


Minhaj’s testimony wasn’t the only interesting thing to happen at the hearing, which was meant to discuss the CFPB Student Cash advance Integrity and Transparency Act and the Transforming Student Debt to Residence Equity Act: New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez literally opened her bank account and made a payment towards her student cash advance debt throughout the hearing.


"I literally made a student cash advance payment Whenever I was sitting here at this chair, and I looked at my balance, and it also was $20,237.16," she mentioned. "I just made a payment that took me down to $19,000 so I feel really accomplished right now."