Joe Manchin: “we are talking about student loans. The thing I have found out working this in the amount of time we have been working…”

“we are talking about student loans. The thing I have found out working this in the amount of time we have been working it is we are all in the same position. We all want to help our students attain higher education, to be productive citizens, to live a better quality of life. We all know that is the most important thing we can do, and we are trying the best we possibly can to come up with a solution. We have what we call a bipartisan bill that we have all worked on. We have everyone's input. I respect everyone's position, and we are going to come to a comprehensive bill. I think under Senator Harkin from Iowa we will have a comprehensive bill that looks at why the costs are so high and why college is so unattainable for so many families today. We have to tackle that problem. The problem before us now is this problem: How do we help the most? What we have before us is 6.8 percent if we do nothing, 6.8 percent across. I know some people have said it is better if the 6.8 stays as it is. I disagree. We have been working on this. Here is the difference. The 6.8 percent that is basically the cap right now--the old cap we had was 3.4 percent just for the subsidized. If we look at the portion of people who are subsidized, it is less than 1 million. If we look at the unsubsidized, it is less than 1 million. If we look at basically the subsidized and unsubsidized, that is more than 6.5 million.…”