If I may, I think that your story is sadly typical, that young people who speak up and who are the victims of these problems somehow get classified as the problem themselves.

I think it is fair to say there is a consensus on the committee that we want to use the vehicle of No Child Left Behind to enhance the growth and quality of charter schools throughout the country.

the taxpayers are absorbing the risk of that capital not the person in the private sector.

So, the way this is working now that an institution gets taxpayer money, lends it out, and then we pay them a premium on top of what the student would otherwise pay to reward them for taking a risk with our money? Is that essentially right?

With respect to 60 percent of what is being called private loans here this morning, with respect to 60 percent of those loans the taxpayer is, in fact, absorbing the risk and we are paying someone a premium to take a risk with our money…

When someone else is paying the bills, costs always rise.

To me, this is not only fiscally irresponsible, but downright immoral.

The ranking member also in his opening statement talked about--he made an analogy to the auto industry. And it seems to me the analogy falls apart in that although we did advance a substantial amount of money to some auto industries, we…

It is the height of irresponsibility to add to that liability; rather, you should be working to whittle it down.

I am glad to hear that my friend from California, Mr. McKeon believes that competition between public and private is a good thing.

I know it is sort of baked into the cake in our debates around here. The people say, well, let the states handle this problem. I don't think the states have done a terribly good job handling this problem.

I would say emphatically no to all those questions. That state laws aren't working, and they are not working because there is proof positive in Cedric's case that there was no communication evidently between Texas and Virginia.