Watch as “squad” member and Rep. Rashida Tlaib says that Congress should use federal funding as leverage to get colleges to lower the cost of tuition:

What do you think?

Should the government use federal funding as leverage to get colleges to reduce tuition costs for students?

Here’s a partial transcript of this exchange, it’s rather revealing:

BALLASY: “Follow up would be concerning the second way. Is Congress were to forgive current student debt, that’s an ongoing issue because colleges are likely to continue to push tuition higher up, especially private colleges. How do you deal with that issue in the future if you were to do forgive this now?”

TLAIB: “I think we need to talk about affordability, right, just like health care affordability. The fact that there are real conversations going on of how can we increase Pell grants, options in that case where if universities, especially universities that are public universities that I know, that rely heavily on state and federal funding sometimes for different projects, different research projects and things like that, that we can leverage that funding and say it’s great, but you also need to be affordable. And many of your folks need to be able to leave your schools debt-free, especially when you’re getting a lot of subsidies in so many ways, subsidies at all different levels of government. I’ve seen universities get tons of it. We leverage that. We leverage that power here.”

BALLASY: “How do you think Congress should deal with people who — students who just paid off their loans? How do you — how do you handle that?”

TLAIB: “I’m not sure. I can tell you this. I think there should be some data, and there probably is, about how that may have set them back in their quality of life, to be able to live their life, like, what can we do to help support them in that way.”