College Cost Reduction Act of 2007
Floor Speech
COLLEGE COST REDUCTION ACT OF 2007 -- (Senate - July 17, 2007)
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I think all of us understand that both for the sake of our country and for the millions of young people in our country, we need fundamental changes in the way we do higher education in America.
If we are going to be effectively competitive in a global economy, we need the best educated, the best trained workforce in the world. We need to capitalize on the intellectual potential of all of our people. It is a loss to our Nation and to the individual if there are people in our country who do not get the education they need to do what they are potentially able to do as American citizens.
I do not have to tell you or the people of our country that in America today, we have some very serious problems in terms of higher education. In my State of Vermont and all across this country, the cost of higher education is soaring, and what that means is that in order to send young people to college, family members to college, people are going deeply in debt, coming out of college, depending on their income, $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 in debt, which has an immediate impact on the career choice that many young people are making.
If one comes out of college $50,000 in debt, if one comes out of graduate school $100,000 in debt, what they are going to do is get a job which makes them a lot of money to pay off that debt rather than go into the profession that they might otherwise have wanted to go into. That is bad for the individual, and that is bad for our country.
Let me be very clear in congratulating Senator Kennedy, Senator Enzi, and other people on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on which I sit. My assistant, Dr. Huck Gutman, worked very hard in crafting a significant improvement in what we have seen in recent years in terms of higher education, most notably very significant expansion and improvement in the Pell Grant Program.
We are making progress in beginning to deal with the very serious problems of higher education and how Americans can afford higher education. But also let me be very clear, and I don't know how many other Members of the Senate will agree with me, while we are making real progress, we have a very long way to go.
When I talk with young people in the State of Vermont about higher education, I ask them how many young people their age who are going to college in Germany or in Europe or even in Canada incur the kind of debts they have and will incur when they get out of school.
Many young people in America are surprised to learn that in Germany, in other European countries, college education is virtually free. It is funded by the government. Frankly, I think that is a good idea. We should look at education in general, and higher education, as an investment in America with an understanding that if many young people are not able to get the education they need, our country loses in terms of its productivity; that it is a waste unimaginable, both for the individual and for our society.
If, as currently is the case, for the first time in modern American history, hundreds of thousands of low-income young Americans are saying: No, I don't want to go to college, I don't want to come out $50,000 in debt, think of what we are losing as a nation, not to mention the economic lost opportunities for those individuals.
Let me be very clear. Before we give hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the wealthiest 1 percent, before we invest in weapons systems that are obsolete, it makes a lot more sense to me that we tell every family in America that a college education and graduate school are going to be there for them if they are prepared to work hard and if they have the ability, they will not be denied that opportunity because their family does not have a lot of money.
Let me also say I have serious concerns that at a time when we desperately need more physicians to bolster our health care system, when we need more nurses, when we need more dentists, it is absurd that people in the medical profession and in other professions are coming out deeply in debt, which also impacts their career choices.
We need, for example, primary health care physicians in Vermont. All over rural America, physicians are choosing other specialities because they can make more money.
To my mind, what we have to say in America, if we are serious about health care, if we are serious about law enforcement, if we are serious about making sure that low-income people have the public defenders they need, that Legal Aid has the lawyers they need, we have to do everything we can to say that anybody in this country who has the ability, is prepared to work hard, should be able to get a higher education regardless of their income and not have to come out of school deeply in debt. As a nation, we should look at that as an investment in the same way we look at many other types of investments.
This bill is a good step forward, but in my view, over the years as we fight to change national priorities, one of those priorities should be that every young person, the kids in the fourth and fifth grade know if they do their work seriously, they will be able to get a higher education; they will be able to make it to the middle class regardless of the economic situations of their families.
The cost of college in the last 20 years has tripled, but Federal financial aid has not kept up. Yes, we have given tax breaks to billionaires, but, no, we have not increased Pell grants and other sources of financial aid. I am very happy the legislation we are debating today will make college more affordable by raising the maximum Pell grant to $5,100 next year and increasing to $5,400 by 2011. That is a significant change and a significant step forward in funding higher education.
In Vermont, what we have seen is that between the 2000 and 2001 and 2005 and 2006 school years, the cost of attendance, including tuition, fees, and room and board, at 4-year public colleges in Vermont increased by 29 percent, from $12,836 to $16,571. Certainly, these Pell grants will mean a lot to the families in the State of Vermont.
As I mentioned a moment ago, the situation is even worse for those people who go to graduate school. Just an example: Students who attend the very fine Vermont Law School in South Royalton, VT, graduate, if one can believe this, on average $100,000 in debt. If they pay this debt off over 30 years, it will mean they will be paying $900 a month toward their debt for 30 years. If anyone doesn't think that impacts career choices, it certainly does.
This bill has a number of very important provisions. Most importantly, it increases Pell grants and it says we have to make it easier for families in our country to afford college.
It also provides a very important provision regarding loan forgiveness. This is something I believe in very strongly. We have worked very hard on this provision with Senator Kennedy and others. What this is about is that in this legislation, there are loan forgiveness provisions for those people who go into public service. We all know if you want to make a whole lot of money, you go to some large company and make a lot of money. You may be one of the lucky ones making millions and millions of dollars a year. What happens if you want to go into law enforcement? What happens if you want to be a teacher who works with disabled kids? What happens if you want to be a Head Start teacher or do the extraordinarily important work of early childhood education, which is some of the most important work being done in America because it enormously influences what kind of an adult a young person will become. What happens if you want to do that?
In my State of Vermont, you can work in childcare and make $9 an hour, often without benefits. If you are coming out of school $50,000 in debt, you are not going to gravitate toward a job in which you make $9 an hour or $10 an hour because after you pay off your student loan, you are not going to have a whole lot to live on because of the low salaries and low wages those jobs involve.
What this legislation does, very appropriately--it is a good start; we have to go further--it says to the young people of this country that public service is an important calling. We want you to go out and work to be teachers, to be in law enforcement, to work in legal aid, to work as a public defender, to work in environmental protection, to work in a variety of areas that are extraordinarily important for our country and for our society.
Many of those jobs do not pay a whole lot of money. That is the reality. But we want you to be involved in those jobs, to work in those jobs, and that means we are going to encourage you to do that by forgiving your debt if you do that. That is one way to help you get involved in those professions.
Some of the professions that would be eligible for this loan forgiveness are a full-time job in public emergency management, government, public safety, public law enforcement, public health, public education, public early childhood education, public childcare, social work in a public child or family service agency, public services for individuals with disabilities, public services for the elderly, public interest legal services, including prosecution or public defense, public library sciences, public school library sciences, or other public-school-based services. That is extraordinarily important.
What we have also done in this legislation is we have increased the eligibility level for people to get Pell grants. That is important because with the limited amount of money that was previously available, I suppose appropriately enough most of that money went to those families that were most in need, and that meant a large number of families in the middle class or lower middle class were not eligible for Pell grants. But we have expanded and raised the eligibility level so that many more families will be eligible.
Mr. President, as I conclude, this legislation is a significant step forward. I congratulate Senator Kennedy for his leadership, Senator Enzi, and all of the people on our committee who have worked on this important issue. But let's not in passing this legislation rest on our laurels. This is a good start, but we have a long way to go.
My hope is that in the coming years, we will pass legislation which will have the impact of saying to every young person in America: If you are in the sixth grade or seventh grade, and if your family does not have a lot of money, if you study hard, if you do well in school, you will be able to get all of the education you need so that you can make it to the middle class, so that you can exercise all of your intellectual potential, and you can get out of college or get out of graduate school without being deeply in debt.
Education is not a ``cost.'' Education is an investment. If we are going to turn this country around and have the kind of health care system that provides health care to every man, woman, and child as a right, we need doctors to go into rural America. We need tens and tens of thousands more nurses. We need dentists. We need all kinds of people in health care, in law enforcement, in environmental protection working with our youngest children.
We have to say to any American: We want you to do as well as you can to get all of the education you can. We are proud of what you are doing. We see that as an investment in moving this country forward.
Again, I congratulate the leadership of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee which I am on. I think we have taken a good step forward. I certainly hope this legislation passes, and I hope we continue to make substantial progress in the years to come.
Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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