Well, the argument was that now, you go to college, and then you find out what your financial aid will be.

Are we spending that $1.1 billion most effectively as a way to help low-income students?

If we took the advice of those who testified, Senator Harkin, before our committee...

I am stunned and my office is cooperating with the investigation.

The House has passed a bill that would take $13 million a year set aside for political conventions and instead use it for pediatric research at the National Institute of Health.

This is an important agency which oversees the enforcement of more than a dozen major laws which govern just about every private sector employment relationship in the United States.

I join with Senator Warren in hoping that we can, together, expeditiously move Dr. Weil's nomination following today's hearing.

But most people who are eligible for a Pell grant end up getting the whole amount, don't they?

I think turning the fiction around by simplifying it and maybe even working with States to encourage the idea of free community college, if you need for it to be free, would do a lot to increase the number of low-income students who go to…

I arrived at the U.S. Senate full of enthusiasm about 11 years ago, thinking I had a little experience in education, and my determination was to simplify the process for Federal aid for students going to college.

So we're talking about a large number.

So then why do you need this?

You can't afford to go to college, when, in fact, if we give you accurate information about it, you could.

the way our system is set up, it's backward.

I think there's no ideological monopoly on the idea of making Federal student aid, whatever the amount is, a friendlier process for students.

I think we've perpetuated this fiction that you can't afford to go to college when, in fact, you can.

Well, we have 9 million Pell grants, so that's 2 million or 3 million students. Is that right?

I think we're going to spend over the next few years about $41 billion to maintain the interest subsidy for subsidized student loans.

Isn't it a fact that with some flexibility...they're saying to them, 'You can afford to go to community college.'

So, basically, if you reverse the process and say, 'We'll tell you earlier how much money you can get, and then you can pick the college,' ... a lot more students will go to college.

There are plenty of things that we do that are less important than this, if we want to keep a high standard of living.

But this proposal from the administration is not without merit.

I agree with Senator Markey, is it's so horrible.

I think that's what has been suggested to me. But let me start with exactly what I'm asking you to consider doing, and that is to authorize the appropriations committees to finish the job that the Congress started in an overwhelming…

The sequester is the long-term enemy. It's inexorable unless it gets eliminated.