Ben Cline

I am proud to join you, Mr. Chair, in introducing the Small Business Reorganization Act to provide an important avenue of relief to the people in our communities who employ countless individuals and who drive our local economies.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, Ranking Member Sensenbrenner, and Chair Nadler for holding this hearing today and for the opportunity to appear before you to discuss the Small Business Reorganization Act.

The Federal Government has a duty to ensure that this right is not violated and that Federal overreach does not infringe on the State's ability to uphold this.

I would argue that many of the provisions in H.R. 1 actually did go in the way of federalizing and removing authority from State and local elections.

I want to applaud you and VCU for the graduation rates that you are discussing today.

Virginia serves as an example of innovation and of a statewide community effort to better opportunities and access.

Encouraging that cooperation is helping Virginia to lead the way in innovation.

I am glad, I want to thank our witnesses for appearing but I am glad we get the opportunity to show off a little bit of Virginia innovation.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing on innovation and higher education.

I am very proud in my own district of James Madison University, the great program they have called JMU X-Labs where students are given real and complex problems from the defense and intelligence communities.

Is VCU being aggressive in their attempt to cut costs and not just to paper over the costs of providing that degree but all actually to reduce costs internally?

Are you encouraging externships, programs outside in cooperation with career services that are giving students a real world example of how they can use that knowledge in the workforce and actually make money with that degree when they…

Programs like these simulate work that students may do during post graduate employment and Virginia serves as an example of innovation.

A lot of times you get competition from higher institutions of learning rather than collaboration and cooperation.

We are in a phase of meeting with all of our customers at this time because customer service is at the top of the list.

It is our job to set guidelines to ensure that integrity is carried throughout the program and that recipients across the States are treated fairly.

We have been sitting here in hearings asking how do we bring down the cost of a college education? And you are providing the solution.

So when I am confronted with parents who can't get into Virginia Techs engineering program because its acceptance rate is something like 10, 12 percent, it is amazingly low, I am able to provide them with an alternative.

If you take your first 2 years at a community college, get your associates degree, transfer to a 4-year institution in Virginia, 4 year public, finish your bachelor's degree in 2 years you save more than $50,000 on the price of that…

The typical bachelor's degree graduate leaves Virginia public universities with nearly $30,000 in student debt on average, correct?

We have the lowest unemployment rate in 49 years, but yet only 13 percent of the population believes that college graduates are well-prepared for success in the workplace.

Well, here we are again at the latest installment of the dramatic miniseries, the impeachment by any other name but impeachment.

If we make colleges free but we don't provide quality educations we are not doing anybody a favor.

Nothing is free when it's provided by the government.

Your work impacts working Americans that are the backbone of this country.