Rob Andrews: “Mr. Chairman, this act is misnamed. It should be called the Special Interest Relief Act of 1995. One of the special…”

“Mr. Chairman, this act is misnamed. It should be called the Special Interest Relief Act of 1995. One of the special interests that is no doubt dancing with glee over the contents of this act is the student loan industry, which has siphoned over $1 billion a year from the taxpayers of the United States of America, until 1993 when we adopted what I think was a good Republican idea called competition. In 1993 we said we would have two student loan systems compete with each other side-by-side. One was the expensive and complicated status quo system run by the banks, and the other was a new, more efficient system run through the college campuses called direct lending. Everything that we have seen from around the country, Mr. Chairman, says, direct lending is winning. Students like it, universities like it, taxpayers like it, but the special interests who profit from the student loan system most certainly do not. So what they have done in this bill is to cut off the competition at its knees. Language in this bill which would be removed by the Obey amendment says, direct lending will be effectively killed, dead and buried as a result of this. That is wrong. It is wrong for taxpayers because direct lending costs less than the bank-based system. It is wrong for students and administrators because around this country, a vast majority of them have said that they prefer the direct lending system.”