We certainly have seen this many, many times over here on the floor. Mark, maybe you want to comment on this.

Let me see if I understand what you were saying. The Republican proposal--which has passed the House of Representatives, is over in the Senate, and hopefully will die there-- by their proposal of allowing an adjustable rate on the student…

I'm going to put up another chart here that speaks to what you just said. This chart talks about our colleagues' proposal. That was one that we passed here. We like to say that this is really about making education more expensive. Here's…

Well, certainly that. And then a young person graduating from college, sometimes they want to get married. They may have to delay that. They want to form a household, buy a house, rent a house, buy the furniture. They can't because they've…

Well, then you're one of these students--ex-students. $1 trillion, this number, the total student loan, is well over $1 trillion today. This is greater than the total credit card debt of every American. So we're looking at a situation…

We can just take a very quick look at the math. If it's a $100,000 debt and it's 3.4 percent--and you're paying just the interest rate, not the principal of the loan--you're talking about $3,400 a year that you would be paying at the…

It seems to me that we need to provide a significant incentive, in this case, for the Coast Guard and perhaps also for other services that if they are able to, in this as we see here, find a way to save three-quarters of a billion, then…

Failing that, it is folly for us to believe the Coast Guard will be able to adequately maintain operations.

Potential savings of three-quarters of a billion dollars is significant, and I know there is going to be some kickback coming from whoever doesn't have that contract to manufacture the remaining 18.

there is a potential savings here of some three-quarters of a billion dollars

It appears to me that the Coast Guard is getting no credit, that is, does not have the ability to repurpose, reuse that $700-plus million to fund its other programs.

What we need is a unified national security budget.