The Official Truth Squad
THE OFFICIAL TRUTH SQUAD -- (House of Representatives - January 17, 2007)
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Ms. FOXX. Thank you, Congressman Price, and thanks for always being so prepared with the Official Truth Squad and having the charts out there that show people the facts. Before I got here, I hope you said your famous line, people are entitled to their opinion, but the facts are the facts and we cannot change those. That is important.
Again, I think what we have here is a sham, and perpetuation of untruths by the Democrats to the American people; and frankly, having served 10 years in the State legislature, in the State senate, we were not allowed to say things that were untrue. We got called down by the presiding officer. So when I first came here and heard Democrats doing that, I was stunned, and as you know, pushed to get the Truth Squad going so that we could get the facts out there.
But I appreciate your comments about my experience. Let me say that I do know a lot about this subject, both from my own personal experience as a student and my experience as a university administrator and college president.
I grew up about as poor as anybody you will ever meet. So did my husband. It took me 7 years to get my undergraduate degree, but I graduated from college without a single penny of debt. We have heard all these sad stories about all these people graduating from college with debt. But, you know, it doesn't have to be that way. People choose to borrow money to go to college. They can work, and they can apply for scholarships. They can do the kinds of things I did. I got absolutely no help from home. I financed my entire education and graduated after 7 years without a penny of debt, so it can be done.
Students have lots of choices where to go to school. We have community colleges that are very inexpensive that do wonderful jobs, all the way up to very expensive schools in this country. People have that opportunity.
After I graduated, after I earned my doctorate, I was a university administrator, and I knew a lot about financial aid because that was part of my job. Then I became a community college president. So I do know this subject very well.
Again, I am appalled at this. I said on the debate about stem cell research that we are so misleading the public, thinking that if we do embryonic stem cell research, we are suddenly going to cure all the diseases in this country.
I think the Democrats are being very cynical again in trying to perpetuate to the American people that if this bill, this bill did pass the House today, by passing this bill in the Congress, what we would do would be to make college education affordable and accessible. It will do not one thing to increase access for any single person going to college. It will not make a college education more affordable.
I heard you and my colleague from Tennessee talking about how it is not going to help a single college student. It only cuts down the cost of interest that people have to pay back after they get out of school, and, as you pointed out, it exists for a mere 6 months. What an absolute travesty to try to perpetuate on the American people.
We need to get the truth about this bill out. I know that there is an 80 percent approval rate for this topic. Certainly the American people want colleges and a university education to be more affordable. However, what we are doing in the Federal Government is, we are actually driving up the cost of going to college. We are driving it up by putting all of this Federal money out there.
You know when the Federal dollars are out there, people will go after it, and the colleges and universities raise their tuition rates every time we increase the amount of money that is available to go to college. Then they scream and yell that they don't have enough money.
That is what we are doing. By doing this kind of a thing, we are doing the opposite of what the Democrats say they want to do.
If they were honest about what they wanted to do, if they wanted to help truly needy students, which I worked with my entire career in higher education, low-income students, first-generation college students, then they would put the money into the Pell Grants or into work-study. Studies show that people who work 15 hours a week while they are in college do much better than students who don't. So that is the kind of thing that we should be doing.
This is another broken promise. The Democrats want to say it is a fulfilled promise. But even this only produces one-tenth of what they promised to do in the campaign, 10 percent return on their promises. We need to figure out a nice ditty to go with that, 10 percent return, 10 percent of the 100 percent promise is what the Democrats are producing here, and it is bad.
What I think the Democrats really want to do is turn us into a socialistic country where the government controls everything. They want to put the government in control. What I think they want to do is drive the private sector out of this area. We do have a direct government loan, but most of the loans are being done through the private sector.
You know, I don't know a single thing in this country that the government does better than the private sector. There is nothing more efficient. But what would happen is, by tinkering with these rates, even making things very insecure, you are going to drive the private sector out. Because they do business plans; they don't have a well to go to, like the American people, to draw up that money just by adding taxes that the American people cannot resist. What they want to do, I think, is really put the government in control of financial aid and of loans. That would be a terrible, terrible mistake. We don't need to be doing that.
So I think it is important that we come here every week, every night, every day, and tell the American people what the truth is about these programs that the Democrats are pushing.
I want to point out one other thing that I am not sure has been pointed out today. I am quoting from a fact sheet that was given to us by staff of the Education Committee. In a shocking display of hypocrisy, Democrat leaders are paying for their $6 billion-plus plan with some of the same lender subsidy cuts crafted by congressional Republicans in the 109th Congress. Ironically, House Democrats voted against many of these cuts the last time they were proposed, calling it part of the now discredited rate on student aid.
Now, what they do, they brought in, in almost every case the bills they brought in had been bills that we had last time. They voted against them, they now bring them in. This is not something that we did last time; we didn't say this. We did do a lot to decrease the rate of spending for loans, but we added money for the loans, but decreased what students would have to pay for the loans. We did do that.
Furthermore, in 2002, Representative George Miller, who is now chairman of the committee, praised what the Republicans had done by fixing the 6.8 percent rate that began last year. He says, in addition to extending lender subsidies, it cuts interest rates to students fixing the rate at 6.8 percent beginning in 2006 and will save the average student about $400. Too often in Congress the needs of the average people come last in line.
My colleagues, meaning Republicans, should be commended for assuring that this legislation meets the needs of students and their families. My goodness, he has got amnesia about what he said just a short time ago about what the Republicans were doing. But this suits their needs. They can get out and make campaign promises and then come in here, fulfill 10 percent of what they promised to do, and then try to fool the American people.
Republicans have done a great deal to help students who are struggling to get an education, and we will continue to do that. But we are not going to be duplicitous about it. We have been very straightforward about it.
I want to thank you again for leading the Official Truth Squad tonight and helping us get the word out to the American people.
We are not going to let them get by with telling their open truths. We are going to bring the facts here every time and make sure that the American people hear, as Paul Harvey says, ``the rest of the story.'
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