Political Quotes

“I have a little history with the student loan program. I see the distinguished Senator from Utah is here. When he was the ranking Republican on the Senate Health and Education Committee 20 years ago, I was the U.S. Education Secretary. He even helped me in my confirmation process, for which I have always been deeply grateful. But he and I worked together during that time when the question of having a government loan program or a direct loan program came up. It was widely discussed. We had a Republican President then and a Democratic Congress. We came to a compromise. The compromise was to say let's have both. We will give students the option and help them stay on and keep the organizations on their toes. So if you are a student at the University of Tennessee, University of Utah, you have a choice. You can either say I don't want to fool with all these private lenders or the local bank or the nonprofit organizations in my State or Edsouth or others or the State organization, I want to go straight to the government. All institutions have that choice. That is 6,000 colleges and universities and 19 million students. Only one-fourth of them choose the government direct lending program. In the United States of America where choice and competition is an important part of our culture, that usually teaches us a lesson.”