Heidi Alexander: “I thank the Senator from New York. I understand he has a previous meeting. I don't want to make him late because maybe…”

“I thank the Senator from New York. I understand he has a previous meeting. I don't want to make him late because maybe it will produce some result. I hope it will produce a result--I don't see an issue that benefits either political party or any Senator. The questions we who have been working on this have asked the Congressional Budget Office are very simple. We have said our goal is to create a permanent solution along the lines the President recommended, that the House of Representatives has now passed, that neither costs the taxpayers additional money or overcharges the student. Please give us what the interest rates would be and what the type of loan should be. The Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, goes through all of this and they suggest a variety of options that we have. What they have told us is that the proposal of the bipartisan group comes as close to being equal as one can get. It is about nearly $1 billion over 10 years which, when you are loaning $100 billion a year, is sort of a rounding error. The intention is to loan it to the students for what it costs the government to borrow the money, but we are not going to overcharge the students and we are not going to ask the taxpayers to pay an additional subsidy. Within that, if you accepted that idea, then you could say there are a variety of ways to do that. You could do it as the bipartisan group has suggested or you could try to put a cap on it.…”