On the recordJuly 24, 2013
as we know, Congress has trouble with deadlines. That is why we always seem to be missing them. When we have trouble finding a permanent solution, we seem to kick the can down the road, hoping to find a solution later. We are here today trying to fix the problem we have with the government student loan programs because we kicked the can down the road last year, and if we do not stop and start fixing things, we will continue to do it. That breeds a lot of uncertainty into the minds of the families and the children who are trying to go on and better themselves. The result was that on July 1 rates on government- subsidized undergraduate Stafford loans doubled to 6.8 percent. That is a fact. That is what we know we are dealing with, and we are trying to reverse that. Not surprisingly, it set off alarms. My goodness, we all got excited about this. What are we going to do? We had a year to do it, but we didn't do anything; we just extended it--3.4 percent and only for the Stafford subsidized loans and nothing for other loans people were taking. When you consider that 11 million students who are trying to better themselves are borrowing money every year, we were only talking about 1 million. That was all we were trying to help. We forgot about everything else. It is time to fix it today with a ``yes'' vote on the bipartisan compromise we worked out. It is really tripartisan--Democrat, Republican and Independent.…
