Rob Bishop: “I appreciate the opportunity of being part of a debate that covered a smorgasbord of ideas. Let me just respond to…”

“I appreciate the opportunity of being part of a debate that covered a smorgasbord of ideas. Let me just respond to several of those that have been presented in the last lead-up to the vote on this particular amendment. As I said before, I'm a teacher. I care greatly about education. I'm especially frustrated with the way Congress has passed or handled the student loan provision. Several years ago, while the Democrats were in control--I'm trying not to be too partisan, but they were in control--we changed the law that dealt with student loans to consolidate that authority within the Federal Government. By doing so, we crushed private-State partnership plans that were an excellent avenue for loans that students could use. They could get breaks depending on their repayment habits. It was a marvelous program, but it was stopped in an effort to try to consolidate everything here within Congress. Since that time, we have played silly games of brinksmanship that deal with what the rate should be and what the rate might be. We have a bill that this body passed on May 23 in plenty of time to extinguish this issue, plenty of time for the Senate to debate it, amend it, send it back to us, appoint the conference, go through regular process, if the Senate wished to do that. Instead, the result is the Senate has basically turned their back on the issue and said, We'll let it go over the cliff one more time.…”