Water Resources Development Act of 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, not once in the history of America has the Senate refused to give a hearing and a vote to a Presidential nominee to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court--not once--until this moment, a moment in history on the death of Antonin Scalia and President Obama's meeting his constitutional responsibility to send up a nomination to fill that vacancy.

A decision was made by the Republican majority, led by Senator McConnell, that he would not hold any hearing or vote. It has never happened before. Some will say: Oh, Senator Durbin, if the shoe were on the other foot--it was, not that long ago. It was the last year of Ronald Reagan's Presidency. He was, in nominal terms, a lameduck. There was a vacancy on the Supreme Court. There was a Democratic majority in the Senate. Ronald Reagan sent the name of Anthony Kennedy, his nominee to the Supreme Court, to the Democratic-controlled Senate.

The Senate not only held a hearing and a vote, but they voted in favor of President Reagan's nominee and sent him to the Supreme Court. But this time, with this vacancy on the Supreme Court, the Republican majority has refused to give this man a hearing for 182 days.

He just visited my office again. He was there 5 months ago. Life is more complicated now because he is the President's nominee. He is still the chief judge of the D.C. Circuit Court. That is one of the most important in the United States. He is recusing himself from cases on the chance that he may get a hearing and may get a vote. He is working on the administrative part of the court, but he is not dealing with decisionmaking and writing opinions. So he is trying to show an abundance of caution and not raise any ethical questions if he is eventually on the Supreme Court.

He is a good man. He is highly competent. The American Bar Association has ruled him ``unanimously well qualified.'' This Senate and many of the Republican Senators have voted for him when he went to the DC Circuit Court. Some have said publicly that he is a qualified person, but they have not said it recently.

One Republican Senator slipped back home at a town meeting and said: Well, I think that Merrick Garland, the President's nominee, at least deserves a hearing. That is what he said: At least he deserves a hearing. The Koch brothers came down on that Republican Senator like a ton of bricks and told him: Be prepared; we are going to run someone against you in the Republican primary. Within 24 hours, that Republican Senator reversed his position and said: No, no hearing for Merrick Garland.

So I think we understand the inspiration for this position. It is certainly not the Constitution we have all sworn to defend. The Constitution is very clear. With a vacancy on the Supreme Court, the President is obligated to send a nomination to fill the vacancy. Why would the Constitution require that? Because you can have some political gamesmanship. A President might decide: Well, I will just keep it vacant. Maybe it is to my political advantage.

The Constitution says: No, Mr. President, send a name. The Constitution goes on to say that the Senate has a responsibility to advise and consent to that nomination. That is where the process has stopped and fallen apart.

So why would the Republican majority in the Senate go out on a limb and take a position that has never been taken before in the history of the United States to deny Merrick Garland a hearing and a vote? Well, because there are certain people in high places who want to see a President named Donald Trump fill this vacancy. They believe he would pick a person closer to their political liking, someone who would serve their economic interests. It is a shame. It is unfortunate. Some would argue it is unconstitutional.

That is where we are, and that is what elections are about. I won't even speculate on the type of person Donald Trump would choose to fill that vacancy. I will leave that for someone else another day. It is really sad to think that a judge of Merrick Garland's quality, of his integrity is being treated so badly.

There was speculation that maybe--just maybe--if Donald Trump lost and Hillary Clinton won, the Republicans would relent and in the closing weeks of this year give him his hearing and his vote. Senator McConnell, just a few days ago said: No, not at all, not on my watch-- there won't even be a consideration of this nominee.

It is a sad chapter in the history of the Senate, written for political reasons, at the expense of a man who should have his day at a hearing in sworn testimony to tell us how he would like to continue to serve this Nation. For-Profit Colleges and Universities

Mr. President, there is an industry in the United States of America that is the most heavily federally subsidized private industry in our country. If I asked Members of Congress what that would be, many would say: Oh, it must be a defense contractor; right? Maybe it is some major farm operation. No, it is the for-profit college and university industry--for-profit colleges and universities.

Think of the University of Phoenix, Kaplan University, DeVry, Rasmussen, and those types of schools.

They are in business for profit. They are the most heavily subsidized businesses in America. The students who attend these for-profit colleges and universities receive Federal money in Pell grants, which they give to these for-profit colleges, and then they borrow money from the Federal Government to pay the tuition at these for-profit colleges. These for-profit colleges--many of them--receive more than 90 percent of their revenue directly from the Federal Treasury.

Well, you would think if an industry or a company were that heavily subsidized, they must be doing one great job--wrong. Here are some numbers. These are going to be on the final. So you may want to make a note. Ten percent of students enrolled in postsecondary education go to for-profit colleges and universities--10 percent.

Twenty percent of all the Federal aid to education goes to these schools. That is 10 percent of the kids and 20 percent of the aid money. Why? It is because they charge so much. Their tuition is so high. There are two other numbers that really tell the story--40. Forty percent of all college student loan defaults are students from for- profit colleges and universities. Why? Because they are so burdened with debt that they drop out or they end up graduating with worthless diplomas. The last number I will give you is 72. So 72 percent of the graduates of for-profit colleges and universities--72 percent, on average--earn less than high school dropouts in America. It is the most heavily subsidized private businesses in America and with awful, terrible results: 10 percent of the students, 40 percent of the loan defaults, 72 percent of the graduates not earning as how much as high school dropouts in America.

Last week, another one of those for-profit colleges bit the dust--ITT Tech, with 35 to 40,000 students nationwide, and 750 in Illinois. I would go home to Springfield, IL, and go by the local mall, and I would look up on the side of the mall and see a sign which read ``ITT Tech.'' I said to myself: I know how this story ends. Some students are going to walk into that mall, and they are going to sign up for a course, and they are going to be disappointed. They are going to end up with a heavy student debt and a virtually worthless diploma. Someday--just someday--that school may go bankrupt or go away.

That day has arrived. What happened to those students? Let me give you one illustration. If you walked into Springfield, IL, to the White Oaks Mall, to the campus of ITT Tech, this for-profit college and university, and signed up for a course in communications or an associate's degree in communication or in computer management, the tuition they charged students in Springfield, IL, for a 2-year degree was $47,000--$47,000.

Get in your car at White Oaks Mall in Springfield and drive for 15 minutes to Lincoln Land Community College, where you could get the same degree not for $47,000 but for $7,000--$7,000. The hours that you accumulated would be transferrable to a 4-year school or wherever you wished to go. The hours at ITT Tech were a laughing matter when students tried to transfer.

So the school went down. The Federal Government took a close look at the practices. They found more than a dozen State attorneys general investigating ITT Tech. Why? What did they do wrong? Well, it was obvious what they were doing wrong. They were deceiving these students into coming into these schools and paying the tuition.

Many of them were steering them into loans--college loans--which were not the best for the students. They were paying higher interest rates than they should have paid. So when they started detecting these things in each of the States, the attorneys general decided to start investigating. More than a dozen of them were investigating this one school.

Then the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, here in Washington, DC, did the same and found predatory lending. Higher interest rates were being charged by these schools than should have been for these students and the company was lying to students about their ability to repay them. Then the Securities and Exchange Commission got involved as well and found that this same school was really violating some of the basic rules in terms of disclosures under Federal law.

Well, as these and other problems continued to mount, the Department of Education said to ITT Tech: Stop. We are not going to let you go forward and bring in more students and receive more money from the Federal Government unless you put up a bond--a letter of credit--to guarantee to us that the taxpayers won't be left holding the bag if you go out of business.

ITT Tech said: Before we will do that, we will go out of business. They did. So these students are out there trying to figure out what is next in their lives. It is a heartbreaking situation. For many of them, they at least wasted 1 year or 2 years or more. A lot of them have piled up a lot of debt at a school that has now gone out of business.

I have written every community college in my State and said: Would you reach out to the 750 ITT Tech students in Illinois, sit down with them, see if they have taken any courses or training of value that can transfer, and put them on the right track in terms of perhaps getting that associate's degree at an affordable cost?

There is another thing that is offered through the Department of Education. Once one of these for-profit schools closes, the students have an option. It's called a Closed School Discharge. They can essentially keep the hours they have earned--the credits they have earned and the debt that was associated with it--or walk away from both.

So students will have to decide. I can't decide for them. Once they have had some counseling at the community colleges, they can make that decision. But here is what ultimately happens. When the students walk away from the debt and the hours they earned at these schools, the losers--the ultimate losers--are the taxpayers of America.

You see, when we pay taxes, it goes into the Federal Treasury. The money out of that Treasury is being loaned to these students to give to these schools. When the students default or if they are forgiven their loans, the Treasury is not paid back. Our tax dollars do not return to the Treasury to be loaned again.

So the taxpayers are the ultimate losers. It raises a very basic question. When is our Federal Government going to wake up to the fact that this for-profit college and university industry is causing great harm to a lot of innocent students across the United States and their families and ultimately to the taxpayers of this country?

Steve Gunderson was a Congressman from Wisconsin. I served with him in the House. He is now the spokesman for this industry. He was quoted in the papers yesterday saying that ITT Tech was being treated unfairly, that they were not given due process, and that this industry was being held to unreasonable standards. I could not disagree more.

What the Obama administration is calling for now is to measure the performance of these for-profit schools and to decide whether they should stay in the business. It is called gainful employment. Here is what it boils down to. If you graduate from a school, if you receive a certificate or diploma that they promised, how much debt did you accumulate? How much is your job paying as you come out of school? Can you reconcile the two? Did you end up with a job that ended up paying enough so you could pay back your loan?

Too few of these students can. Mr. Gunderson now argues that we should not hold the schools to those standards, that we should not be concerned about the amount of debt, and that we shouldn't really ask about what kind of jobs these students end up with. I think we should. I think we owe it to the students and to their families to do just that.

8, 2016] Late to the Fight Against Predator Schools

The federal government's failure over decades to regulate for-profit colleges freed the schools to prey on veterans, minorities and the poor by saddling students with crushing debt and giving them worthless degrees in return. This is all the more outrageous because the schools rely on the federal student aid system for virtually all of their revenue.

The Obama administration has taken steps to get these schools off the federal dole. But regulators need to intervene decisively--and as soon as possible--when evidence of fraudulent conduct emerges. They must also reach out to students who are entitled to have their loans forgiven when a school defrauds them or shuts down while they are enrolled.

Just this week, ITT Technical Institute--one of the nation's largest for-profit operations--announced it was closing, leaving about 35,000 students in the lurch.

ITT blamed the Education Department, which recently barred it from enrolling students using federal funds, citing its accreditation problems and financial instability. The department also demanded that ITT come up with more than $150 million to cover refunds in case it closed. According to the department, ITT could not do so.

The school has only itself and its business model to blame. In 2011, Senate hearings showed that ITT recruiters were deliberately targeting desperate unemployed people for some of the most expensive programs in the for-profit sector and that many students were taking on high-cost private debt after exhausting federal aid. It also emerged that the company was spending more on marketing than on instruction--a giveaway of what the game was about.

ITT's reputation got worse every time it came under investigation or was hauled into court. In 2014, the federal Consumer Financial Protection Board sued it for pushing students into high-cost private loans that were likely to end up in default. A year later, the Securities and Exchange Commission accused it of fraud and charged it with concealing financial information from investors.

Complaints have also arisen at the state level. This year, Massachusetts charged ITT with falsifying job-placement rates for one of its programs. The death knell finally sounded for ITT this spring when the organization that accredits independent colleges and schools told it that it did not comply with accreditation criteria that were not rigorous to begin with.

The Education Department is at fault for waiting so long to end ITT's use of federal aid. Now it needs to adopt and vigorously enforce recently proposed rules that shield the taxpayers from loss when a school is forced to close.

The most important rule would require schools that show signs of financial instability--like being sued by federal entities or state attorneys general or failing to meet requirements for receiving federal aid--to put aside money for debt relief for students hurt by the school's conduct. The companies and their supporters in Congress want the rule rolled back. But the only way to hold schools accountable is to make the cost of abuse high.

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Mr. DURBIN. This editorial says that this should be an eye opener. This should be an awakening for Congress and for our government. We saw Corinthian go down, another for-profit school. Do you know how much that cost the taxpayers? Over $1 billion. Now, don't believe for a minute that the CEO of Corinthian or even the CEO of ITT Tech is sending any money back to the Treasury. No way. They are off with their millions of dollars--which, as presidents, they took out of these bogus universities--living a pretty sweet life. They got the money, the school went down the drain, and the students are left holding the bag with the taxpayers. We could lose over $1 billion on Corinthian. Sadly, ITT Tech could turn into another billion-dollar baby. Which one of these for-profit schools is going to fail next?

One they are looking at closely is called Bridgepoint. Bridgepoint is based out of California, but they did something very interesting. Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa had a hearing and told the story of Bridgepoint. Bridgepoint, a for-profit school, bought a Franciscan college in Iowa--a small Catholic girls' college that was going out of business--and they created something called Ashford University. They said: Our campus is in Iowa. This is where we are going to do business.

It turned out it was a fraud on the public. It was the showcase for another for-profit school.

Listen to this. Tom Harkin's investigation found Ashford University had 1 faculty member for every 500 students. They put almost 25 percent of all their revenues into marketing, signing up students, picking up their Pell grants, picking up their college loans, turning it into profits, and paying millions of dollars to their CEO and the officers of their company.

Now they have closed down that campus in Iowa, and they are looking for a home. They need one because now one of the most lucrative businesses of for-profit colleges is the military and veterans. The military provides assistance for Active military members and their families to go to school. These for-profit schools are swarming all over our military bases trying to get these families to sign up and also those who come out of the military with GI bill rights. They have a lot of money to spend--as we want them to spend to improve their lives--and it is these for-profit schools that are crawling all over trying them, trying to get them to be part of it.

Well, they need a base of operations, Bridgepoint does, to continue to receive GI Bill benefits and no State wants them. Iowa has said: No thanks. California, where they are based, has indicated they don't want them either.

So will Bridgepoint be the next? I don't know, but I know there will be another one. There will be more disappointed students. There will be more disappointed taxpayers.

The question that ought to be asked by those who are following this is, What are you doing in the Senate or the House to deal with this? How are you changing the rules and the law to protect students, their families, and taxpayers? The answer is, we are doing nothing--nothing. That is inexcusable, unacceptable.

I don't know if we will have time this year to take up an issue of this magnitude, but we must. I wish we would, but if we can't, then next year we must.

How many more students are going to face what the students at ITT Tech are facing at this moment? Do we care that the most heavily subsidized private businesses in America are doing such a miserable job for students across the United States? We should.

I sincerely hope my colleagues will join me in this effort. This should be bipartisan. We have a lot of Senators who spend a lot of time zeroing in on whether people are getting an extra 50 bucks a month for food stamps they shouldn't receive. I am against food stamp fraud, but are they not ready to zero in as well on this horrific waste of billions of dollars each year to an industry that is not serving America well?

I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Kaine) would vote ``yea.''

I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Kaine) would vote ``yea.''

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