On the recordJuly 24, 2013
I am asking a question of Senator Harkin and then I will be happy to yield. What I would like to put in perspective is $715 million to the Treasury over 10 years. Over a 10-year period of time, CBO estimates the government will make $1.4 trillion worth of student loans. This $715 million, when compared against that, comes out to .005 percent. So we cut it as close as we could. What does it mean to the students? It means to the students, according to the way they factored it out, that for each loan a student takes out--$2,000, $3,500, whatever it happens to be--there will be on average a surcharge of $2.76. That is what comes to $715 million. So the net result of it is--we would like to bring it to zero; that was our goal. The way this place works, that was hard to achieve. I thank the Senator from Iowa for dedicating himself to those things. I wish to address him in the form of a question, to be complicit with the rules of the Senate: If we fail to pass the bipartisan approach we are bringing to the floor, what will be the immediate impact on students and families in the United States?
