Judd Gregg: “Should I charge this to the Senator's time? Essentially, I am clarifying the Senator's point. I will do this on my time.…”

“Should I charge this to the Senator's time? Essentially, I am clarifying the Senator's point. I will do this on my time. Essentially, the origination fees are being eliminated under this bill. I point out that the initiatives which are in this bill are initiatives which had bipartisan support, the SMART Program specifically. But the new grant and aid for low-income college students is about $3.7 billion in this bill. Lower fees charged to students will cause students to gain about $4 billion in this bill. The program which extends the loan forgiveness program, as I just mentioned, to a number of different categories will generate about $1.9 billion in this bill. That adds up to about $9 billion of initiative in this bill. We think this bill has some pretty positive initiatives. As to the loan rates, I didn't insist on staying at this loan rate. I think that came from the other side of the aisle. Did it not? I believe it did. I think the Senator from Massachusetts is the person who basically has locked us into this fixed rate when it should be a variable rate. The variable rate would save our students a lot more money. Unfortunately, my idea of going to the variable rate was rejected in committee by, I believe, the Senator from Massachusetts, who wanted to stay at the fixed rate. That costs how many billions? Over $5 billion, according to my staff. Now, that is a back-of-the- envelope guess, but that is probably in the ballpark.…”