Political Quotes

“I rise today to talk about the student lending program that I understand we may be voting on a little bit later today. I want to first say, like my colleague, I have talked with a number of students in Tennessee and people who used to be students in college who have a tremendous amount of loan obligation they have to deal with. Our hearts go out to folks whose careers start with a large amount of debt, and we hear lots of stories about the size of this debt. So I want to start by saying that I certainly empathize with much of what is happening in the student lending program as it relates to the recipients on the one hand. On the other hand, as it relates to how we deal with this issue, which also relates to these young people--I mean, at the end of the day, these massive deficits we are piling up are also going to be an obligation to them in one form or another. I want to speak to that for one moment. First of all, I want to say that my friend from Tennessee, the senior Senator, has done as good a job as any of laying out what is driving tuition costs in the first place. The reason students are having to borrow so much money to go to college these days is due to what we have done in Washington. What I mean by that is if we look at the Medicaid Programs in West Virginia or Tennessee, what we have seen over the course of the last couple of decades is that Medicaid costs have been rising dramatically in our own States.…”