Tom Harkin: “I want to speak to amendment No. 202 by Senator Cruz, which we will be voting on shortly. The Senator from Texas…”

“I want to speak to amendment No. 202 by Senator Cruz, which we will be voting on shortly. The Senator from Texas informed us that the amendment would repeal the Affordable Care Act. Well, that approach has already been rejected by the electorate, I would just reference, in the last election. Also, we have had more than 35 separate votes in the Congress about that and we have always upheld the Affordable Care Act. But I want to focus Senators' attention on something that is in the Cruz amendment that they may not know. When we passed the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, not only did it contain the health care portion of it, but it also had a portion in there on education. What we did was to stop that old system of subsidizing banks for student loans and changed it into a direct loan program. That was about a $61 billion transfer from the banks getting these risk-free government subsidies to basically putting it in so that students could get more of the money. So under that provision, for example, $36 billion of those savings went to increasing the Pell grants. So now we have a higher Pell grant award and it is indexed to the rising cost of living. The Cruz amendment--maybe the Senator didn't understand it when he drafted it--in the drafting of it, does away with that. So if my colleagues vote for the Cruz amendment, they are, in fact, voting to cut Pell grants. Go back and tell your colleges and universities that.…”