Political Quotes

“it was in 1957 that there was a world event that changed my life and the lives of many others. I was just a kid in high school at the time. In fact, I wasn't quite in high school. But the Russians decided to launch a satellite called Sputnik, and that satellite, the size of a basketball, which emitted a tone as it flew through space, scared the world, all of us, to the point where the United States of America did something that was controversial but we felt was necessary. We decided that the Federal Government of the United States would loan money to students like Durbin to go to college because we were afraid of the Russians, and we knew that, if they had the scientific advantage of us, it could mean we would lose a war, which no one wants that to ever happen. So we created here in Washington something called the National Defense Education Act. I am sure that was carefully chosen to remind people that what we were doing was defending the country by loaning money to people like Durbin to go to college, and I took advantage of it. Those National Defense Education Act loans had terms that most of us from that era remember very well. You didn't pay anything on your loan balance for the first year you were out of college, and then you had 10 years to pay it off at 3 percent interest.…”