Thomas E. Petri: “I commend him for his effort on his amendment. In fact, I agree with its general thrust. The gentleman is correct that…”

“I commend him for his effort on his amendment. In fact, I agree with its general thrust. The gentleman is correct that up to now we have tried to figure out how much to pay the lenders for providing student loans in a political negotiation and we in Congress really have no way of knowing what the right price is. It would be much better if we had market process to determine that. I am interested in working in that direction. That is why we have a provision in the bill to study this whole issue. However, I believe that the gentleman's amendment is simply too much, too fast. It was not offered in committee, and we simply are not ready at this point to adopt one particular full-blown market process from among the many alternatives in the manner the gentleman's amendment provides. Therefore, I would urge the gentleman to withdraw his amendment, and I will be happy to work with him to move toward incorporating a market mechanism in this program in the future.”