Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Medicaid Information Technology to Enhance Community Health Act of 2013, or the MITECH Act. I am proud to be joined by my colleagues Senator Franken and Senator Whitehouse in introducing this…

I think what they are referring to--and I might have misunderstood, but I think I am accurate on this. Everyone will take the loans for the longest period of time, and I just got out of school so I want the smallest payment. Four or five…

To both of my friends, let me say that I graduate from college--no matter what the interest rates are, no matter what they might have been--I graduate and economic times are tough. I find a job that is not what I think my value is, but I…

I have one question that I would like to ask in the spirit of a colloquy to my dear friend from Iowa. They are saying 1 year, and they are looking at the compromised, bipartisan bill we have worked on. In 3 or 4 years the rates may go up…

Let me say very quickly--and I will use $10 million hypothetically that is borrowed every year--$10 billion, $10 million, whatever you want to use--25 percent of that money goes to the subsidized, just 25 percent. I understand that it is…

That was the bipartisan agreement we had. I appreciate that very much. Let me say, here is the last 10 years. If we would use the last 10 years, with the bipartisan bill kicked in, this is what the students who basically are paying the…

I am not sure how the Senator voted on the extension a year ago. I voted for the extension a year ago.

I don't intend to vote on the extension again because we have not fixed it. By voting on this extension, what we are voting on is 3.4 percent just for the subsidized, and everybody will be at 6.8 percent, and 7.9 percent for PLUS loans…

I think we are going to have a chance to vote on one bill, and that is about $2 billion. In West Virginia that is a lot of money in savings of $7 billion that students don't have to pay in interest, which is across the board for students…

Was that for every student who was in college at that time no matter what their ranking or what service they had performed in the military or whether they had the GI bill?

Everybody in college during that period of time could borrow at the low rate of 2 percent with no interest at all?

Maybe Congress did a better job of getting its financial house in order than we have.

I think what we are talking about also is that they are saying if it consolidates, it strings the payment out for the maximum of 30 years, which means they are paying a lot more back in interest; correct? That is the argument I have heard…

So that is $9 billion versus $2 billion, and that is about as simple as I can make it.

At the end of that, then I pick up whatever interest rate has accumulated while I was in school, and I take it from that day forward. What I think a lot of our colleagues don't understand, I can't make it just on that $3,500. I have to…

So the money I would have to borrow, even though I qualify because of my income for a subsidized loan, I don't have to pay the interest on an annual basis. So by bringing it down to one low rate, I am making much lower payments. So that is…

If we look at it from year to year, we have 3.4 percent for the smallest group, 6.8 percent for everybody above that, and 7.9 percent for PLUS. Under our bill, it is 3.66 percent for all undergraduates, and every rate comes down; correct?

We agreed on that. We have agreed on a long-term fix, 10 years, rather than kicking it down the road another year, knowing another year will come and go and we are probably going to be standing here debating. That is the conclusion we have…