Joe Manchin: “if I may respond to my dear friend from Rhode Island for whom I have the utmost respect. We have a respectful difference…”

“if I may respond to my dear friend from Rhode Island for whom I have the utmost respect. We have a respectful difference as far as how to approach this problem and we are working through it. We really, truly, are working and we will work through it. We had a charge a year ago to fix it, so we started working on that. The President in a timely fashion gave us a piece of legislation that had a longer term fix, 10 years. We took that and worked off that original proposal given to us by the administration, by the President, and we started working in a bipartisan manner to make this work. With that being said, we looked at the 3.4 percent and I would say a majority of our Senate colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans, did not understand that the 3.4 percent only affected those that were subsidized loans. That is the smallest amount of loans we have out there. I think the majority of our colleagues, the majority of the people, the majority of the press thought we fixed it at 3.4 percent for everybody who had a student loan. That was not the case. We wanted to go back and make sure if we do something we do it for everybody, because the person who has income limits and qualified for the subsidized loan, the first year they get that loan it is $2,500; the second year it is $3,500; the third year it is $4,500; and the fourth year it is $5,500. That is the maximum they can borrow. So you know what. They borrow the nonsubsidized.…”