Political Quotes

“The Senator from Colorado, Michael Bennet, and I have been working for 1 year to make it easier for the 20 million American families who fill out the Federal application form each year in order to receive grants and loans for college. The piece of demonstrative evidence that Senator Bennet and I have been carrying around in Tennessee and Colorado is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid or FAFSA. This is the form that 20 million Americans fill out. It is familiar to many families as it has 108 questions, and it is important to them because about half of the American families who have students in college have a Federal grant or loan to help pay for college. The problem with the 108 questions is that they are generally unnecessary. Senator Bennet and I were at a Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing. We heard four witnesses representing different perspectives in our country saying that we only need two questions to know whether we could make a Federal grant or loan to a student from Wisconsin who wanted to go to community college with roughly 95 percent accuracy. So today we are introducing legislation which is named the Federal Aid Simplification and Transparency, or FAST, Act. It will turn these 108 questions into two--one about the amount of family income and one about the size of family. It will free students and their families from the dreaded FAFSA.…”