Heidi Alexander: “if I could have the attention of Senators, we have four more votes before lunch. It is 11:40 a.m. What we would like to…”

“if I could have the attention of Senators, we have four more votes before lunch. It is 11:40 a.m. What we would like to do is to have 10-minute votes. So if Senators will stay on the floor, we will have 10-minute votes or come as close to that as we can. Madam President, this is an interesting idea, but it belongs in the Higher Education Act, which we are about to take up in our committee, and here is why: It duplicates two existing Federal programs called Gear Up and TRIO. No. 2, we already have $30 billion of tax credits that we spend. This involves more tax credits. We already spend $30 billion. We should calculate the advantages of this program, along with the $100 billion of loans we make, the $35 billion of Pell grants we make, the $30 billion of tax credits we have, and see where it fits into that. The time to do that is in the next big bill we have from our committee, which is the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. I urge a ``no'' vote. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the amendment.”