Political Quotes

“I don't have a great deal to add to Senator Manchin's comments except to point out that everyone in this body wants to do best by our students. Everyone understands the importance of education, everyone understands how expensive it is, and everyone understands the problem of the debt burden on our students. We are all trying to search for a solution that can garner bipartisan support and pass the Senate, the House, and go to the President. The proposal we have put forward before the body today is based upon, in many ways, the proposal made by the President in his budget. It is similar to a provision that has already passed the House. I think a couple of points should be made. One point that should be made is there is a lot of talk about a floating rate. I think people think of mortgages and adjustable rate mortgages where the rate changes from year to year. Under our proposal, once a student takes out a loan in a given year, at whatever the rate is that year, that rate is fixed for the life of the loan. The following year, if interest rates--and we are talking about the 10-year Treasury bill of the U.S. Government, one of the lowest interest rates there is--go up, then it would go up. That is for next year's loan, not for the loan that has already been taken out. I think we have learned from our current circumstance the folly of Congress trying to set interest rates. Setting 6.8 percent and 3.4 percent interest rates 5 or 6 years ago looked like a great deal.…”