College Student Relief Act of 2007

COLLEGE STUDENT RELIEF ACT OF 2007 -- (House of Representatives - January 17, 2007)

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Ms. FOXX. Madam Speaker, I am very grateful to my colleagues for giving me an opportunity to speak on this bill. I have been listening to the debate on this bill, and it is, again, an amazing situation for me.

My colleagues on my side of the aisle have been extremely articulate. They have presented the facts, and I am amazed that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, at how they can stand up and simply not tell the truth over and over and over again. I am just astonished by it.

I graduated from college after 7 years without a dime of debt. I worked my way through school. Any student who wants to go to college in this country can graduate from college without a dime of debt.

We have all kinds of choices in this country as to where to go to college. If people want a college degree, they can do it.

What we are doing, by decreasing, by the sham, it is nothing but a sham, and I think people have to say that over and over again. I am not going to repeat the statistics that have been given, because they have been given very well.

My opponents simply cannot deny the facts, they cannot deny the numbers. How we have increased the Pell Grants, they can't deny, and how they did nothing to increase the Pell Grants. But they cannot deny the facts. They can give your opinions, but they cannot deny the facts.

One of the facts is, there is going to be one time, 6 months, where this is going to be cut in half, as they said they were going to do. What a shame that they are doing that and making the people of this country believe that they are, quote, ``keeping their promises.' They are not keeping their promises.

All we are doing is inviting colleges and universities to increase their tuition and fees. I became a college administrator and a college president. So I know student financial aid from the inside and out. This is, again, a smoke-and-mirrors issue.

We are not going to help students, we are not increasing accessibility for poor students. If we were, we would be putting this into either work-study or Pell. That is how you really help the low-income students who are trying to go to school, not by decreasing to 3.4 percent for 6 months, the loans.

What they are really trying to do here, I think, is drive the private sector out of the market for having student loans. They would like the government, again, to take over this entire program.

We are not increasing this issue of accountability. We don't know when our students graduate from college now what skills they have. Republicans have tried and tried and tried to get schools to be accountable for what they are charging for, and it is very expensive to get a college degree these days, especially if you go to private institutions.

So we don't increase the accountability, but we increase what the colleges and universities are going to charge. I think it is a very cynical move on the part of the Democrats to do this, and I think it is very unfortunate.

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