Joe Manchin: “I wanted to speak in a little detail on another topic, and that is the direction we are going on the student loan…”

“I wanted to speak in a little detail on another topic, and that is the direction we are going on the student loan crisis, I guess. It is a shame we have come to this. A year ago, I voted for the extension. We were told at that time that due to the political atmosphere, we had the big election year coming up, that we couldn't get into the details and fix it the way it maybe needed to be fixed and should have been fixed back then. So a lot of us went ahead and voted for the extension, and now we find ourselves in the same position this year as we were last year. There will be another election in 2014. So it seems as though we are always in an election cycle, and if we allow that to continue to direct what we do and how we do it, we would get little done here, which is what the public is getting frustrated with. A few of us got together, myself, Senators Alexander, Carper, and King, and we decided maybe we could come together and work on something. There is no perfect fix for anything here, I have found, and this is complicated and confusing if you don't delve into it. So I started looking into it more this year than I had before. I think a lot of our colleagues, and a lot of people in the country, believe the so-called ``doubling of the rates'' from 3.4 to 6.8 meant everybody's rates had doubled. First of all, there was just a small percentage of the loans we loaned out that were getting the advantage of the 3.4 if we extend it.…”