Elizabeth Warren

I believe, if I understand this correctly, what we are trying to do is protect the subsidized Stafford loans. What I understand the Republicans have tried to do is protect all the new loans so no one is dealing with all the loans that…

The noncommunity banks were the ones that took on all the risk and crashed the economy?

Although I am not sure we regulate that directly here in Washington.

Let me just follow up on a question that Senator Crapo had put out on the table about how we maintain a strong environment for our community banks, because they are so important to the rest of our economy.

Part of the concern I have is not simply whether there is physically a bank outlet operated somewhere, but that community banks do more small business lending, and once they are swallowed up by big banks, whether they are swallowed up…

I believe we need banks of all sizes, including community banks.

When minimum wages go up, workers have more money. And when workers have more money, they buy things from the very companies that raised those wages.

What I did is I pointed out that if the minimum wage had been linked to productivity starting back in the late 1960s, if we had just linked it to productivity, how much more each earner is working, our earners collectively are working, it…

The U.S. Government is scheduled to make $51 billion in profits off our students this year on their loans. This is obscene.

And I think you hit a big part of that, Ms. Traub, when you said, 'Because the workers do not have any power.'

Low wages have been one of the reasons that we have hollowed out America's middle class.

If I was God and could do anything I wanted, I would raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour over 3 years, starting tomorrow.

State schools, they were supported back then.

This is a big ticking time bomb because people can get out of other kinds of debt through bankruptcy, but as you know, they cannot get out of student debt.

I want to say thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to go fight about student loans for a little while now.

It is about our opportunity. It is about how we build.

I was on the floor talking about the approaching increase in student loan interest rates and how Congress needs to take action now.

I am a big supporter of unions. I am. But raising the minimum wage is a far more economically efficient way to generate growth.

The major argument for not raising the minimum wage, that is, it will cost jobs, at least the academic studies seem to show is not right.

Twenty years, and you are still paying for this.

There is no issue that is more important than what we are discussing today.

The constant refrain is, no, we cannot raise the minimum wage because it will cost jobs, there will be fewer people employed.

We need to remind ourselves, with a Federal minimum wage right now of $7.25, we have a bill pending to raise it to $10.10.

We have to do better than this for our children.

When college costs were a lot lower.