Political Quotes

“Madam President, I am pleased to offer this amendment, along with Senator Warren and 18 of our colleagues. Our amendment would provide the kind of certainty students deserve and that they will not receive under the proposed bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act as it is currently drafted. Simply put, our amendment will ensure that students and parents will not be any worse off than they would be under the current fixed rates of 6.8 percent or 7.9 percent. To illustrate this, let me present a chart. Under the underlying legislation, Stafford loans for students are essentially subject to the same interest rates, and they are depicted here. These are the undergraduate loans in yellow and the graduate loans in white. We can see in the first year for the undergraduate loans it is just under 4 percent, and that is less than the 6.8-percent current statutory limit. For the graduate loans, they are up roughly about 5\1/2\ percent, which, again, is below that. But very quickly, by 2015, the graduate loans exceed this 6.8-percent threshold. That is the current law. Then it keeps going up and up and up. Actually, this chart does not represent the entire impact because the last bar represents the estimates not just for 1 year but for 5 years. So we can see these increments--the white increments for the graduate loans--keep going up and up and up indefinitely. This is permanent legislation. This is not a 5-year fix or a 10-year fix. It is permanent legislation.…”