John Williams: “As I said when I sponsored this amendment, we had an administration that believed a cutoff rate was the appropriate…”

“As I said when I sponsored this amendment, we had an administration that believed a cutoff rate was the appropriate thing to do. I thought it would reduce the deficit, potentially at least I thought it would save us some dollars. But I was not sure it was good public policy. I knew it was bad public policy for colleges who because of the history of the type of student, particularly the income level of the students they treat we could identify them as simply not able to meet these default rates. Now I fought in committee and in that conference committee against doing it at all to any school. But as long as we were going to do it, I took the best of a bad deal and tried to improve on it by at least protecting young Americans of color from the worst of what would happen to them. Now the bad thing that is going to happen to them is inadvertent. I do not think anybody intended it. And now I am trying to protect them against having that inadvertent thing happen to them, which is going from 25 to 35 percent.”