Political Quotes

“Madam President, reserving the right to object, my good friend and colleague from Massachusetts stated that students in Massachusetts have come up and said: Senator, fix the student loan program. Fix it. She said that what Republicans have done is they have filibustered it. The fact is that what Republicans offered was a fix. What the Senator comes to the floor today to do is to have a 2-year extension of a student loan program that the Secretary of Education admits does not fix the problem. As a matter of fact, in a Washington paper today, Secretary of Education Duncan is very clear and implores the Senate and the Congress: Fix it. Find a long-term solution. Let me state for my colleagues that what the Senator from Massachusetts is here to do is to extend a preferred interest rate of 3.4 percent for 2 years on 39 percent of the student loans that are taken out. Current law is that for subsidized student loans, they are subsidized at 3.4 percent. That preferred half, 50-percent cut, is effective until the end of June. But under current law, the unsubsidized Stafford loans are at 6.8 percent. The parent and graduate PLUS loans are at 7.9 percent. My colleague's amendment only covers the subsidized Stafford loans that are 39 percent of all of the loans that are administered. So what her proposal says is that we are not going to fix it, we are going to kick the can down the road for 2 more years.…”