Political Quotes

“I say thank you to my colleague from New York. Before I elaborate further, let me say that first you have to understand that there is a problem in order to address the problem. I think far too often some of our colleagues on the other side fail to recognize the fact that so many families who are struggling to help their students obtain a college degree are having to do so through student loans and rely greatly on Pell Grants for that assistance. Maybe it's because they don't have that same experience that they don't understand why these are important. This is what the House Republican budget would mean for those very programs that you're talking about. First, the Republican budget freezes the maximum Pell Grant for the next 10 years, even though Congress already enacted and paid for mandatory annual inflationary increases in 2010. With this one step, they slash higher education funding by $83 billion. The House Republican budget allows the interest rate on need-based student loans to double this summer. The House Republican budget eliminates the income-based repayment program, which provides that Federal student loan borrowers can cap their loan payments at 15 percent, going down to 10 percent in 2014 of their discretionary income each year. The reason that this is so important is because of constituents like the ones I spoke to on Sunday in my district. We were talking about the immigration issue.…”