Timothy Roemer: “I wanted to discuss with the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon) an amendment that we had been working on in…”

“I wanted to discuss with the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon) an amendment that we had been working on in committee, starting actually at the subcommittee level and then going into the full committee and then going to the House floor, where I offered amendment to provide more flexibility for students to combine their loans for government subsidized and unsubsidized loans before trying then or being forced to go out into the private lending market, where they would take on added costs and where the rate might be 9 or 10 or 11 percent, but try to keep them at the 8.25 percent rate and thereby reduce costs, provide more flexibility and less regulation to many of the students that are trying to get into these markets and coming out with more and more debt once they graduate from school. This is exactly what we have heard everywhere in our field hearings throughout the country, where the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Upton) and I had a field hearing in South Bend, Indiana, and heard from about 20 different colleges about trying to provide more flexibility to our schools and less regulation. This is an idea whose time has come, trying to help so many of the students that are coming out of school with debt.”