Joe Courtney

So, I want to again salute the subcommittee for holding this hearing.

If we are looking at a strategy both public sector and private in terms of just how we moderate and hopefully reduce premiums.

Last November, this country experienced a historic moment. It was the largest voter turnout in a midterm election since 1914.

List prices before rebates determine America's cost-sharing amounts so again, the patient and the worker again is really sort of excluded from all the--

We elected a new majority with a plurality of 10 million votes which shattered all records in history of this country.

Fed Loan has collected over $1.3 billion in tax payer dollars because of the servicing contracts that they have with the Department of Education.

The crushing disappointment that people experience when they built their whole life plan and professional career for 10 years, you know, to get that rug pulled out from under them is just devastating.

The Administration has submitted two budgets since taking office in 2017 for fiscal year '19 and '20 and both at times that have zeroed out the PSLF program

The refusal to testify today to be accountable on a public forum when the program they administer fails more than 99 percent of the borrowers is really outrageous.

I think, frankly, we should join them in that effort as well with passage of this law.

Federal Government needs to be cautious that it does not impede on the work that States are doing to support education.

One from Coventry, Connecticut, a teacher took almost a dozen tries through the system before, and it was only because they just were obsessed with making sure they weren't going to get--take no for an answer from the Department.

I think the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program or Teacher Loan Forgiveness Program that did exist or kind of exists now is certainly a--it is certainly a benefit for folks who are interested in teaching.

And we all should bear responsibility from Congress on down for the fact that there are many, many, many teachers in America today who have never really been prepared to teach a child to read.

Streamlining and making the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program actually functional should be one of the focuses of HEA reauthorization.

Frankly, I wish we did more of this, in terms of really learning from other examples around the world.

Again, I just want to join my colleague from Virginia (Mr. Wittman), and I look forward to working with him in the conference committee to make sure that that question is resolved. Both of us understand the issue and, again, I look forward…

The Bureau of Labor Statistics in January reported that union membership among State and local government employees actually held steady.

And other examples of compelling State interest would be, again, the access to healthcare, coverage for medically prescribed services.

So basically what has happened is the compelling State interest has sort of then continued to be degraded...

So basically your experience is that replacement workers basically kind of enable employers to just drag out job actions and delay actually resolutions of these kinds of disputes?

I just wanted to followup actually on the Chairwoman's opening comments about the value of unions in terms of the standard of living of workers.

It was an 11 day strike and the company obviously calculated that they could outlast the union.

Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and thank you to all the witnesses for being here today.

On Easter Sunday, 31,000 employees of Stop & Shop Grocery Stores, after an 11-day strike, reached an agreement.