College Student Relief Act of 2007

COLLEGE STUDENT RELIEF ACT OF 2007

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Mr. COURTNEY. Madam Speaker, H.R. 5, introduced by Mr. Miller in the opening hours of this Congress, begins the critical work we must do as a Nation to build an economy that is based on an educated workforce.

Make no mistake about it. The economic health of our country will turn on whether or not our children have the educational tools to compete and succeed. And make no mistake about it, all the present trends in access to higher education point to danger.

The bipartisan National Conference on State Legislatures issued a report last month which described higher education in America as a system in crisis, largely due to the Federal Government's declining commitment to keeping higher education affordable.

Coming from a congressional district that is home to the University of Connecticut, this finding comes as no shock. Students and their families all testify to the same grim condition: tuition has gone up 41 percent since 2001, college costs have gone up faster than health care over the last 25 years, and in Connecticut, college is increasingly becoming the sole province of the well-to-do.

According to the Hartford Current, 58 percent of Connecticut's young people from the top income tier are in school, and only 16 percent in the lowest are enrolled. Students are leaving college burdened with record levels of debt, and many are forced to leave early because of economic hardship.

Even though all these disturbing trends are occurring, the last Congress did the unthinkable. It cut $12 billion of Federal assistance for college loans, pushing up the rate of interest for students. No other budget decision of the last Congress demonstrated how disconnected its priorities were than this cut, which hurt not only just students but America's future.

H.R. 5 will begin to repair the damage of the 109th Congress' harmful cuts to student hopes and America's economic future. It will reduce the rates of student loans by 50 percent over a 5-year period, and it will do it in a fiscally responsible manner with offsets, not an increase in the deficit.

Chairman Miller deserves great credit for H.R. 5 and represents a down payment on the efforts of the Education and Workforce Committee to strengthen, and not weaken, our economic future.

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