Political Quotes

“Thank you, Congressman Clarke, and thank you for sharing your personal story. What has been sort of extraordinary to me is that over the last few months, as we've been working on H.R. 3826, our office has received communications from all over the country from folks talking about the importance of the Stafford program in terms of really transforming their lives. I'll be at Chamber of Commerce meetings; I'll be at Rotary Club meetings; I will have people who are not on my side of the aisle politically but coming up to me afterwards and saying this is something that the Congress absolutely has to pay attention to, that it has to protect that lower rate, and thank God this person had the Stafford loan program available to him just like you did. To see that rate go up to 6.8 percent at a time when our economy-- Treasury bonds are being sold at a 2 percent yield. You can get a 30- year fixed mortgage for, really, under 4 percent right now, variabilities at much lower. When you tell people that this rate is going to double to 6.8 percent for this one segment of the population, young Americans who really are doing it for the purpose of improving their own situations, it's greeted by just absolute utter disbelief. At a time when, as you point out, debt levels--and I've got a little chart here from the Federal Reserve which shows where we're headed right now in this country.…”