Political Quotes

“I think, Congressman, when we think about issues that come up here, issues that sometimes succumb to the gridlock that is Congress these days--for example, on the student loan issue--that's why it's so important that we make sure that we do right by students and not allow that student loan interest rate to double. In these tough economic times, it's hard enough for families to scrounge up the money to help send their kids to college and for the kids to work a job or two and go to class. They're often in this work-school tug-of-war where many of them work part-time or full-time and at the same time take their 15 hours or 12 hours to graduate in a decent number of years. The least that Congress can do is make sure that we set a student loan rate that is affordable and reasonable for the economic times that we live in. Those things are not handouts. Those are investments to make sure that you've got a well-educated population. These are loans, after all. They're paying these back. It's also, I think, their government saying, Look, we're going to lend you this money at a decent rate--we're going to make sure it comes at a reasonable rate--and you're going to pay it back to us, but from that, we're going to get folks who are engineers, who are police officers and firefighters and doctors and all of the things that keep our society moving and keep this country the greatest Nation on Earth.”