Lateefah Simon: “although it is unusual for me to speak from a prepared text, I want to spend a little time providing my colleagues with…”

“although it is unusual for me to speak from a prepared text, I want to spend a little time providing my colleagues with some of the history and facts regarding an item that appeared in the Republican Party's platform last month. The issue is a successful Direct Student Loan Program which has saved students and taxpayers billions of dollars by streamlining a complicated system and enhancing competition. It is a great disappointment to me that an issue with such strong bipartisan roots has been turned into a one-line rhetorical attack on the President. That is unfair to the program, unfair to the President, and it is unfair to the Republicans who spent years promoting these reforms. Five years ago, I teamed up with David Durenberger, then a Republican Senator from Minnesota, in proposing to shift to a direct loan program with income-based repayments for all students who desire it. We proposed using the billions saved with that proposal to restore the buying power of the Pell Grant Program, which has suffered from years of underfunding. The loan reforms we put in our bill were not original. They were borrowed, with a few minor changes, from Representative Tom Petri, a Republican from Wisconsin with conservative credentials, with whom you and I served, Mr. President, in the House. My colleague, Senator Al D'Amato, now the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, cosponsored the Petri plan in the Senate. Republican support for direct lending was broad.…”