Dick Durbin: “I thank my colleague from Connecticut for referencing a measure in which we both share an interest. He is right; a…”

“I thank my colleague from Connecticut for referencing a measure in which we both share an interest. He is right; a student loan is not like another loan. It is not like the mortgage on your home. It is not like the money you borrowed to buy a car or a boat or a line of credit you might have needed at some point in your life. A student loan is a debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. No matter how bad things get, you are going to carry that debt with you to the grave, and believe me, they will pursue you all the way. We just had a report in the Wall Street Journal. There was a grandmother receiving Social Security benefits. They levied her benefits because grandma decided to befriend her granddaughter by cosigning her student loan, on which her granddaughter defaulted. So now grandma finds her Social Security check being levied to pay off her granddaughter's student loan. It never ever ends. So I support my colleague from Connecticut. He and I both believe this ought to change. This is awful. For goodness' sake, we have to have some recognition of what is happening with student debt today. It is not the way it used to be. Those of us fortunate enough to get the early government loans--the National Defense Education Act, that is how I went to college and law school. Scared to death when the Soviets launched sputnik, this Senate and the House created a loan program for kids like me from East St. Louis, IL, to borrow money to go to college.…”