Heidi Alexander: “I want to thank the Senator from Pennsylvania for coming to the floor today on an issue I know he cares about. I thank…”

“I want to thank the Senator from Pennsylvania for coming to the floor today on an issue I know he cares about. I thank the Senator from North Carolina. We are accustomed to working together. We are accustomed to getting results, and I want to get a result on this. I agree with both Senators in this sense: I think it is time to send a signal to historically Black colleges and minority-serving institutions that they don't have to worry about funding for the future. For the next year, the Department of Education has told them: You have the money for the next year. It shouldn't take us a year to finish our work. So I look forward to sitting down with the Senator from North Carolina and the Senator from Pennsylvania and working out their differences on the provisions that we have. We have the basis for a very good higher education bill--the permanent funding for historically Black colleges, the simplification of the FAFSA, which affects 20 million families every year. We have broad bipartisan consensus on simplifying how you pay back student loans. There are nine different ways now. We could reduce that to two. That affects 43 million families. The short-term Pell grants make a big difference. So we have a number of provisions, and I am working well, as I always do, with the Senator from Washington, Mrs. Murray. I would like to bring this to a conclusion as rapidly as we can. I think this debate has been useful to do that. I look forward to continuing it. I yield the floor.…”