Political Quotes

“Mr. President, over the last few weeks many of my colleagues have been engaged in a very serious, very deliberate, very thoughtful attempt to deal with the issue of student loan interest rates, which doubled July 1 for subsidized loans. They have contributed significantly in terms of trying to move this issue forward to reach a thoughtful and appropriate conclusion. From what I have heard, under their approach--the Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act of 2013--I don't think, despite the good efforts and good intentions, that they have reached the objective, which is to make college affordable for all of our students and to somehow try to prevent this tidal wave of student financial debt, which is in some cases overwhelming to so many students and families across the country. Instead of emphasizing the students, I think what they have done is just tried to shield the government from investing in those students. The clear impact of the legislation that is being proposed is that it will increase the cost of education for students. We were in a position where we legislatively reduced the rate to 3.4 percent. We had an extension for 1 year to this July. It doubled to the previous rate in existing law of 6.8 percent. What this proposal does is to keep the rate relatively low at first-- although it goes up a bit higher than the 3.4 percent--but invariably, mathematically, it gets very high.…”