Joe Cunningham: “at the same time, taxpayers do not have to pay for the extra bureaucracy that is not actually going down to education…”

“at the same time, taxpayers do not have to pay for the extra bureaucracy that is not actually going down to education, so it lessens the burden of taxes and at the same time reduces the size of government that we do away with wasted bureaucracies. It is common sense. Let me give you another example. How can we balance the budget and actually enhance money to education? The President's direct lending program for student loans was capped at 10 percent during the 104th Congress. When the Government shut down, the President, one of his goals was to take that to 100 percent. We balked and went to 40 percent. At 10 percent it cost $1 billion, not $1 million, but $1 billion more in administrative fees. This is a GAO figure. Fact, not Republicanism. It takes $4 billion more to collect those dollars, and that was only capped at 10 percent. So when it went to 40 percent, when the Government shut down at the request of the President, we limited the administrative fees which basically go to pay for a higher bureaucracy. And what we did in the subcommittee is we drove an increased Pell grants for poor children to the highest level ever.”