Christopher Shays: “whatever the numbers ultimately that have come through the addition of negotiations in the budget agreements that…”

“whatever the numbers ultimately that have come through the addition of negotiations in the budget agreements that happened since, the bottom line is that we were spending hundreds of millions of dollars more each year and to get up to $6.8 billion in the 7th year. The student loan is the one that really gets me the most. We are going to allow that to grow from $24.5 billion to $36 billion. That is a 50-percent increase. It is not a cut; it is an increase. We do something. We are saying to students they have to do something they have not done in the past. Present law is, when they graduate, for 6 months they pay no interest. The Government, taxpayers, pay the interest. Then what we have said is no, students will pay the interest not when they are in school; they pay no interest when they are in school. They will have a 6-month grace period when they pay no return on the loan. But 6 months on, they start to pay the loan back, and we amortize the interest as soon as they graduate. It is a 6-month period. Ultimately, we are saying, yes, students are going to pay more. They still get the same loan. They are going to pay $9 more a month. It is a movie and a Coke. It is a pizza. The bottom line is, it is something that a working person now, having graduated, can pay. It saves the taxpayer $4 billion in the course of 7 years. We still allow that program to grow, though, notwithstanding, from $24.5 billion to $36 billion.”