Future Forum

Floor Speech

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Absolutely. I thank the gentleman from California for yielding, and I say to my friend from Ohio that it is good to get the band back together.

It is really incredible that it has been 10 years. I don't really want to think about the birthday that I just had and where that puts me. I guess a few years after we started the 30-Something Working Group at least I and our former colleague Kendrick Meek from Florida passed the status of being 30-something, and we were 30-somethings in spirit while we were doing that for a little while.

I am a little longer past being a 30-something now, but it is absolutely critical that we have an opportunity now to pass the torch, Mr. Ryan, to the next generation of 30-somethings who are focused on making sure that, as we go from generation to generation, as Democrats, we are focused on making sure about those cornerstones of a middle class life that we talked about 10 years ago, making sure that you don't have to choose between buying your groceries or filling your gas tank so you can get to work, which then, if you can't, would cause you not to be able to afford your groceries.

Now, 10 years later, Mr. Swalwell--I had young children back then. Mr. Ryan was single, and now he has young children. My twins are actually 2 years from going to college, so the student debt crisis that has been looming and has existed and has overly burdened so many Americans is now something that my family has trepidation about. So it is incredibly timely that we relaunch this working group and make sure that the issues that are important to that next generation get the attention and the focus on the floor of the United States House of Representatives.

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n response to your question, whether I have heard this in my district, absolutely. The average debt that an individual carries in student loan debt is about $29,000. That is crushing debt for years to be burdened with. Even President Obama, not long prior to becoming President, he and the First Lady had both talked about how they only just had paid off their student loan debt just before he took office.

Imagine into your not even late fifties, late forties, still paying off your debt from college and postgraduate school. It is just outrageous. Yet Republicans--and let's make sure that we zero in on brass tacks here--Republicans have consistently denied Americans the opportunity to reform the student loan program so that we can ensure that when they are paid a salary that it is in line with how much they have to actually pay back out of their monthly paycheck to actually make sure that they can make ends meet.

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ell, what hasn't happened is a focus in a bipartisan way on making sure that we make college affordability a top priority.

I will tell you that I know my husband and I are at the intersection in our family of wanting to make sure that, as we send our twins, two at once, off to college 2 years from now, we will be able to, one, be able to supplement as much as possible their college education so that, knowing what we know about the potential for them to have that debt burden when they graduate, we can relieve that possibility, and trying to figure out how the heck we are going to add that double-whammy expense when they start college and at the same time being pretty panicked about how much debt they will have to go in themselves if we can't really make sure--and families all across--less about me and more about the sort of average middle class family that is trying to make sure that they can make ends meet for their whole family and make sure that they can send their kids off to start their lives, which is why President Obama and congressional Democrats have proposed that the first 2 years of college be free.

I will tell you that I have a lot of folks at home in south Florida who have said to me, ``You know, if I only had to worry about my kid's junior and senior year and how we were going to pay for that and we knew that at least they could get an AA degree.''

Over 100 years ago, when we established free universal access to public education in elementary grades and eventually secondary grades, no one would question. That was considered controversial back then. No one today would consider universal free public education, except maybe some of our friends on the other side of the aisle. Actually, I take that back. But you wouldn't question, you wouldn't think, that universal access to public education should be free.

We are at the point now in the 21st century where there shouldn't be any question that the first 2 years of college should be free, and we need our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to join us in that.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And part of this is not just the first 2 years of college free, but Democrats are also pushing initiatives like how do you streamline and get high school kids into community college classes early while they are still in high school to start taking and reducing some of those costs.

We have programs in Canton at Stark State where you can get 13 credit hours towards a welding certificate. Thirteen of 30 hours can be done before you even graduate from high school. So that reduces and it is free because it is part of your high school public education. So now you are already starting.

So it is not just about reducing student loans and reducing debt and Pell Grants and streamlining the first 2 years. But we also, I think, have an obligation to streamline the current system that is K-12 or K-14 and make sure we narrow that down.

I have got to step out, but I just want to say thank you. You have got another Irish guy here to carry the flag.

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Because I want to engage as we used to do. And I know that you do this as well. But I just want to follow up on what you just said because the gentleman from California posed the question and stated the fact that millennials today really aren't starting new businesses. You would think--and we envision them to be the start-up generation. They are living in a start-up era, but, yet, they can't see it.

To use the vernacular of the gentleman of Florida, Congressman Meeks, when we were throwing things around on the House floor 10 years ago, let's put the cookie on the bottom shelf here.

If, as you just said, they are saddled with the burden of significant debt coming out of college when they get a degree, it is very difficult for them to see a pathway to develop that small business, to envision being a pioneer of the next great industry.

So we are literally saddling them with a heavy burden as they leave what is supposed to be the jumping-off point for the next phase of their lives. We are supposed to be passing them the baton so that they can move America forward. It is just not fair. It is not right. And our friends on the other side of the aisle are part of the problem.

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I wanted to share my own personal story very briefly.

You know, I happened to get married fairly young at 24 years old. Graduating from a public university, the University of Florida, without debt, the progress I was able to make at the beginning of my adult life, at the beginning of my professional life, enabled me to have a much longer ramp and see many more possibilities because I didn't have that debt.

My husband and I were able to buy our first house right after we got married, and we have been able to make sure that we can make choices that will maximize our opportunities to ensure that our children, when we had them and now are raising them, have opportunities.

It is so sad that the millennial generation really doesn't see it, doesn't believe it, and that is because there is obstacle after obstacle being thrown in their way right from the start of their most formative years.

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