Political Quotes

“I rise today with my colleague Senator Wicker to bring your attention to our proposed Dental Loan Repayment Assistance Act. This legislation will provide incentives for dental and dental hygiene graduates to remain as dental school faculty by eliminating certain loan assistance benefits from being counted as taxable income. We rely on dental faculty to train the next generation of oral health providers, but too often, these educators find themselves pushed to work in private practice in order to pay off their student loans. The Dental Loan Repayment Assistance Act will ease some of this financial burden and allow faculty to stay where they are most needed. There are currently over 5,000 dental health professional shortage areas nationwide--areas where it is hard to find a dental provider even with insurance coverage. By 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) projects that the United States will have a national shortage of 15,000 dentists. We can only hope to solve this problem if we can recruit and retain enough faculty to train the next generation of dentists and dental hygienists. Crippling educational debt should not prevent our Nation from having the oral health care providers it needs, and this bill will help address that. I would also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge that February is National Children's Dental Health Month.…”