Watching the third senatorial debate between incumbent Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren, one moment stood out to me. In response to the subject of student debt, Brown brought up the fact that Warren makes a six figure salary as a Harvard professor. Her salary places Warren in the top one percent of income earners while many of her students struggle with tuition. Brown’s statement epitomizes the contrast between the two candidates.
This does not mean that Brown necessarily “won” the debate. In fact, the fiery Warren effectively waxed egalitarian and other equally vacuous points. These topics are nonetheless sure to resonate with the residents of the Commonwealth and certainly struck a chord with the raucous Springfield crowd.
Brown’s tepid, one-foot-in conservatism may lend itself to commercials highlighting his bipartisan record, but it makes his task to expose Warren’s statist mantra, without at least partially diminishing his reputation as an independent, that much more difficult. However, Browns’ statement juxtaposing rising tuition costs with Warren’s hefty professor’s salary illuminates one of the many hypocritical qualities of Warren’s campaign.
In many ways, Elizabeth Warren is the quintessence of today’s Democratic Party—ideological, egalitarian and all too eager to sacrifice the founding principles of our country on the altar of “progress.” A career academic, Warren’s professorial nature contradicts the populist tone she takes on as champion of the middle class. This proclivity towards grandeur so frequently exhibited by Warren informs the evident penchant for untruth that has plagued her campaign.
She infamously lied about her heritage, claiming Cherokee descent for personal gain despite an utter lack of any genealogical evidence. Furthermore, she declared herself the “intellectual parent” of Occupy Wall Street, before rescinding the claim as the movement’s true colors made it politically poisonous.
Most recently, it has been discovered that Warren practiced law in Massachusetts without a license. While working for Traveler’s Insurance Company, her job was to deny remuneration to victims of asbestos poisoning. Not only does this potentially disqualify Warren from political office, but it shatters the image of the “middle-class warrior” that she has so meticulously crafted.
Warren’s supporters counter by claiming that the allegations against her serve only to distract from the real issues at hand. And while the “Native American” controversy has undoubtedly gotten out of hand, habitual dishonesty is an unbecoming characteristic in a public servant and our country would be better off with fewer liars in our chambers of congress.
That being said, Brown and Warren offer two distinct choices to Massachusetts voters. In terms of issues directly affecting students, Warren has pledged to support and enlarge the scope of existing policies that have caused the unsustainable inflation of the student-loan bubble. Instead of lowering prices by opening the college landscape to more private competition, Warren has chosen to pursue a top-down government approach to higher education. She’s ostensibly hoping to replicate the policies that have so badly failed our nation’s public high schools.
A college degree should represent a certain amount of merit achieved by the student—we should improve the quality of education by giving students a broader range of options, not simply by making a degree easier to obtain.
Another pertinent topic of the contest between Brown and Warren is tax rates. During the debate in Springfield, Brown had many opportunities to expose the flaws in Warren’s ideologically driven tax plan, but he failed to do so.
Warren’s plan would raise taxes on small businesses and middle class families, who would bear the brunt of the new taxes associated with the Affordable Care Act. According to the CBO, the plan championed by Warren and President Obama would eliminate 700,000 jobs nationwide, stifle growth, and finance approximately 11 hours of government activity.
In dialogues with many students here at UMB, one thing that I have noticed is a desire for compromise. The general consensus seems to be that if the two sides can’t find some common ground, nothing will get accomplished. If ability to compromise is an important criterion, Senator Brown is the clear choice.
A Republican who votes with his party 54 percent of the time and supports abortion, among other left-wing social issues, may draw the ire of conservatives like me. Nevertheless, it at least can be seen as a step towards dissolving the partisan gridlock currently stifling our legislative chambers.
Ask yourself this: Is a woman who has claimed that businesses owe their success to the government, spent her entire career in the ivory towers of academia, and has repeatedly misled the people of Massachusetts really fit to represent our state in the senate?