Today Senator Warner spoke from his office via Skype with students of Richmond’s J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College. 

Senator Warner began by speaking about the debt and deficit, and how Congress’ dysfunction has made a challenging problem far worse. 

“Coming to Washington, so much of our politics is divided into Red-Shirt, Blue-Shirt, Democrat-Republican,” said Senator Warner. “It can be very frustrating, especially since none of the real solutions are Democrat-only or Republican-only ideas.”

He also spoke about bipartisan legislation that he has recently co-sponsored, the Student Right to know Before You Go Act, which aims to provide students with comprehensive information about the cost, duration of study, and related job availability of college degrees they plan to pursue. 

“This legislation will be a good, common-sense tool you can use to find out what fields pay the most and what jobs are most available in the areas that you live… because too often we sends kids off to get degrees in fields where jobs don’t exist.”

Senator Warner also took questions from the students, whose areas of academic focus ranged from public policy, to law, to criminal justice and more.   One student, who was pursuing a degree in education with the goal of becoming a teacher, asked Senator Warner what he was doing to prevent deficit reduction from leading to further cuts to our education system.

“First off, thank you for being willing to be an educator,” said Senator Warner.  “Education is under assault in America, and this is exactly why we need smart deficit reduction.  Cutting education is not only the wrong thing to do morally, but if we continue slashing funding to education, roads and bridges, and research and development, America’s not going to stay competitive globally.” 

“This is we why we need a balanced package of smart spending cuts and revenue increases,” he continued, “that don’t impact areas like education which are already hurting.  If we don’t confront our deficits in other areas, then we won’t have enough money left for the most vital things, like education.”