Christopher Shays: “Medicaid. That is correct. And we did not cut the School Lunch Program, we slowed its growth slightly, but allowed for…”

“Medicaid. That is correct. And we did not cut the School Lunch Program, we slowed its growth slightly, but allowed for more discretion in how it is spent. And I want to get back to each of those. We did not cut the Student Loan Program. It went up quite significantly. I would just go backward from the issues I mentioned. The Student Loan Program, when we passed our plan and sent it, the President was spending $24 billion. And in the 7th year of the plan, under our plan, it would have spent $36 billion. Only in Washington when we spend 50 percent more do people call it a cut, but it was called a cut. Now, it is true that it would have gone to $40 billion in terms of tax money. There was $4 billion that we did not spend. But the $4 billion we did not spend was actually money that we said that the banks would pay instead of the taxpayers. The banks would cover more of the bad debt and the banks would cover more of the administrative costs. So the irony is when our plan was defeated, the taxpayers now have to pay $4 billion more and we saved the banks, who would still have made a good income from participating in the Student Loan Program.”