Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I thank my friend from New Mexico for his kind words, and I thank him for the great work he did on getting us to this point. I have a limited amount of time. I want to respond to the motion to commit made by the Senator from Tennessee yesterday that would reduce our investment in Pell grants and replace them with lower student interest rates. We all want lower student interest rates. I am, quite frankly, surprised. I do not remember my colleague from Tennessee or other colleagues on that side of the aisle raising much cane around here when the private bankers and Sallie Mae were charging students over 20 percent interest. I did not hear a peep out of the other side. We have capped all of those interest rates now, and we are changing this program to a direct loan program to get the middlemen out. By cutting out the middlemen, by cutting out the huge subsidies to the bankers, we are able to save over $61 billion over the next 10 years, which we are using, again, to put into the Pell Grant Program to help our students. I said yesterday, and I repeat, think about the present status quo with this indirect guaranteed student loan program. Think about how bizarre it really is. The Federal Government pays fees to private banks to make entirely risk-free loans using taxpayer dollars. The loans, which are already guaranteed by the Federal Government, are then sold back to the Federal Government.…”