Political Quotes

“I would rather make the points that I need to because at 12 we are going to vote on one bill. We are going to vote on a 3.4-percent extension, kicking the can down the road for 12 months, not fixing the problem, not finding the solution, and continuing to overcharge some students and subsidize another pool and go to bed at night and feel good about this. I think the reason we have a bipartisan agreement is there are some who do not feel good about that. We look at it and we say the Senate has not done what people sent us here to do, and that is to get it as close to right as we can. Again, I say to my colleagues--and I can go to the CBO again--the CBO scored the bill, and CBO says the bipartisan bill is within .7 percent of having no cost and no surplus. I am not sure you can get any closer than that. They have also told us verbally and showed us in scoring: put the cap in and you raise the interest rate on all students, all postgraduates, all parents. And our objective, when Senator Manchin and Senator King and Senator Coburn and Senator Alexander got into the discussion, was, How can we get rates as low as we can? Our focus was on the affordability for the students; secondarily, the sustainability of the program, which was long-term, something we do not visit every 1 or 2 or 3 years. Let me get into specifics because there are four proposals out there. One of them has already passed the House of Representatives.…”