Tom Harkin: “in a little over a half an hour we will have a vote on whether we are even going to proceed to the bill that will keep…”

“in a little over a half an hour we will have a vote on whether we are even going to proceed to the bill that will keep interest rates on our subsidized Stafford loans at 3.4 percent for the next year or whether they will go up double on July 1. This is just a vote on going to the bill. For the life of me, I cannot understand why the Republicans do not even want to go to the bill. Well, perhaps they are afraid if the vote really comes down to the bill itself and the, quote, offset, that maybe some of my friends on the other side of the aisle will think that students may be a little bit more important than a few wealthy people in this country who are not paying their fair share of taxes. But they are going to hide behind this motion to proceed. So that is what the vote is at noon. Are we going to even go to the bill so we can debate it, offer amendments, vote it up or down? Republicans do not even want to go there. They do not even want to proceed to the bill. They have clouded it up in a lot of rhetoric about offsets and how we are going to pay for this. It comes down to a choice. We have a serious offer, a serious offer, a serious offset, one which is widely recognized as a terrible loophole. By closing that loophole--which affects a microcosm of individuals in this country--we are able to pay for keeping the interest rate at 3.4 percent for another year.…”