Christopher Shays: “We are not cutting the earned income tax credit; it is growing. The Student Loan Program is growing. The student lunches…”

“We are not cutting the earned income tax credit; it is growing. The Student Loan Program is growing. The student lunches are growing. Student loans are growing by 50 percent. Every student is going to get the same amount of loans under our plan as they would get under the President's plan. There is a difference. We are saying, with the students in that period of when they graduate to when they get a job, and we allow a 6-month, what they call grace period, interest free, we are going to have that interest paid by that student, but we are going to allow that interest to be amortized during the entire repayment of the loan. It amounts to $9 more a month. It is a movie theater and popcorn. It is a pizza. It is something that we are asking students to do. They will still have all the loans, but it is $9 more a month, and that is because we do not want the taxpayer to pay that. We are saving, admittedly, $4 billion in the next 7 years, the taxpayers are.”