Mark Takano: “Well, I thank my colleague, Mr. Garamendi of California. We're both Californians. What this will do is further burden…”

“Well, I thank my colleague, Mr. Garamendi of California. We're both Californians. What this will do is further burden many of my students who are already burdened with a great deal of debt load from the University of California. But there are many students who bear even a greater debt load because they attend some of the private universities in my area. Many of my students leave my district for other schools and are going to out-of-State schools. The student loan debt is, I think, a hugely serious, serious problem. Before I came to the Congress, I was a teacher for 23 years. I taught high school. I always tried to counsel my students to be careful about the debts they took on. I would like to let my colleague know that when I was graduating from high school in the late 1970s and went on to an Ivy League school on the east coast, I had a package that the Ivy League school put together--contribution from my parents and some work study. But my total loan indebtedness from 4 years of Harvard College did not exceed $15,000. That was an amount that I could fairly easily manage. I am just horrified that students are racking up debts for undergraduate study of $80,000 or $100,000 worth of debt, let alone the debt they're going to have to incur when they go on to their master's programs. {time} 1930 A doubling of the interest rates would add just a tremendous burden to these students.”