Political Quotes

“I thank the chairman and the ranking member, the Senator from Wyoming, for all their hard work on bringing this important legislation to the floor. Mr. President, I wanted to try to paint a personal face on some of the students whom I have met this past week on how it is going to impact them. But let me just set the table by saying we voted on this back in 2007 in order to give some relief to students, and we cut the loan interest from 6.8 to 3.4 for undergraduate Stafford loans. The whole idea was, in this time of economic trial, that we would give some little break to students. Indeed, it is and has been a break. It is something on the average of $1,000 a year we were looking at a student saving in extra interest payments on these loans. When it comes right down to the personal stories, they are wrenching. At the University of Florida, meeting with a group of students this past week, a young woman--I will not use her name because she just broke down in tears--pointed out how not only did she have Stafford loans but that her mom--who had gone through school as an adult raising a family--had gotten a degree in computer science and could not get a job, was going back to school because she had an LPN associate degree and wants a registered nurse degree where she can get a job. So the mom and the daughter both had a considerable number of loans. This young woman absolutely broke down as to what it was going to be in the way of financial burden.…”