Political Quotes

“I am joined by my colleague, Senator Brown of Ohio. We are extraordinarily apprehensive that in 45 days the interest rate on subsidized student loans will double in the United States. Young people and middle-aged people who are struggling to educate themselves and reeducate themselves will be faced with a tremendous increase in the cost of college and postsecondary education. The interest rate will go from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. This is particularly ironic when the Federal Reserve routinely lends to large banking institutions huge sums of money at less than 1 percent. So this is a huge impact on middle-income Americans who are struggling with so many challenges: housing costs, employment problems--the whole plethora of issues they face. It is estimated that more than 7 million students, including 43,000 in Rhode Island, will suffer because of this doubling that will take place. A lot of our colleagues have said: Of course we don't want to see this happen. I thought it was terribly ironic yesterday that they, with very few exceptions, voted consistently for budgets that would, in fact, double the student interest rate. In fact, one of the budgets they voted for previously, the Ryan budget from the House, would also eliminate the in-school interest subsidies for certain loans. So there is this incongruity between, oh, we are all for keeping interest rate low for students, but, of course, in our budget we double it.…”