College Cost Reduction and Access Act -- Conference Report

Floor Speech

COLLEGE COST REDUCTION AND ACCESS ACT--CONFERENCE REPORT -- (Senate - September 07, 2007)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DURBIN. I say to my friend from New Hampshire, who is leaving the Chamber, I am sorry he is leaving. This water is put on our desks by our loyal, dutiful pages every day. Sometimes I want to check this water because I think perhaps imbibing it leads to political amnesia. The longer you drink the water on the floor of the Senate, the more you tend to forget reality and forget what has happened.

I just listened to a speech by the Senator from New Hampshire talking about deficits and reconciliation bills. The bill we have before us today, the most dramatic increase in student aid ever in the history of the United States, does not add to the deficit. We pay for it. What the Senator from New Hampshire, whom I respect and like very much, fails to acknowledge is that when he was chairing the Budget Committee, when these reconciliation bills would come to the floor, they would add dramatically to the deficit every year. In fact, we have totaled it up. Over the last several years--2001, 2003, 2005--the Republican reconciliation bills added $1.7 trillion to the deficit. Now they come and rail against the deficits.

This bill before us today is a bill that is paid for. It is paid for by taking subsidies away from student loan companies. Do you know what happened the last round in reconciliation? They ended up taking about $12 billion in help away from students and giving it to the wealthiest people in America in tax cuts. Talk about reverse Robin Hood, not only adding to the deficit but taking money away from students, raising the cost of their loans, and then giving that money in tax cuts to the wealthiest people. That was the politics that was rejected in the last election.

My friends and colleagues are making speeches believing that we don't have this written down somewhere about what actually happened, but we do. I am afraid my colleague has forgotten some of the most important things that happened under his watch and their watch, which was to add, in three reconciliation bills, $1.7 trillion to the deficit.

Mr. GREGG. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. DURBIN. I will when I have finished. This may be the single most important bill we pass. Most of us realize if there is one thing in America that gives you a chance to succeed, it is education. We can't guarantee to our children that they will be successful or wealthy or happy in life, but we can give them a chance. The best chance we can give them is to let them go to school and progress along and go to the best schools they can attend.

I happen to be standing here today because 50 years ago, somebody in the United States House of Representatives decided that because the Russians had launched Sputnik and frightened us with the prospect of losing the war in space, we needed to give more young kids a chance to go to college. So college, which had been kind of an elite opportunity for the wealthy and the sons and daughters of those who graduated from colleges in the past, was now expanded and democratized.

In the 1960s, kids, such as myself, from east St. Louis, IL, had a chance to go to great universities such as the one in town that I went to named Georgetown. I didn't have any money. I borrowed it from the National Defense Education Act. What a deal. Pay it back over 10 years after you graduate, and at a 3-percent interest rate. It worked. I got my college degree and my law degree. I paid back my loans, and the money was there for the next generation.

Now what has happened to the cost of college education? It has gone through the roof. I just sat down with a couple kids from colleges in Chicago. I said to a junior and a senior: How much debt will you have when you graduate? The junior said: I am at $35,000 right now. The senior said: I will be at $45,000 when I graduate.

Those figures, unfortunately, are not unique. More and more students are ending up with debt.

I say to Senator Kennedy and to my good friend and close colleague, George Miller of California, they have done a great favor for America and for America's families. What they have done with this bill is to expand Pell grants, which are basic grants to kids whose families don't have a lot of money, for the first time in 5 years. For 5 years these Pell grants have been frozen. Now they are going up. Then they have come up with unique ways to reduce the burden of student loans so that young people who sign on the dotted line so they can go through another year of school, never thinking what this means 10 or 20 years from now, are going to pay dramatically less in interest.

George Miller and I introduced a bill that cut the interest rate on student loans from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent. It is included in this important bill we are going to pass today. Think about that for a minute. If you think of it in terms of your home mortgage, what if you could cut your interest rate in half, from 6.8 to 3.4. You are going to pay off that loan sooner. You will pay less in interest.

They have another provision in here that is dramatic and ingenious. If a young person coming out of college with student debt agrees to take a job as a nurse or a teacher or a social worker, things we need more young people to dedicate their lives to, we are going to forgive their loans more quickly. We are going to limit the amount of money they have to pay back each year on the loan. Then in 10 years, the student loan is erased, if they will go into teaching. This is a dramatic commitment we have made to young people to go into jobs and professions that are so important for our future.

We give a lot of speeches here about how much we love this country and how much we want to see it succeed. The real test is whether we are prepared to invest in our children. This bill invests in our kids. This bill takes money that might otherwise have gone for tax cuts for the richest people in America, which was the pattern that was building around Congress, and instead invests in working families and their kids. It says to a child: If you are good enough to get in a good university, if you will work hard and succeed and get a degree, even if you have debt, at the end of the day, we are going to stand by you. We are going to give you a chance to pay that debt off in a reasonable way and to pick the career and life that you want. Don't take the job that pays the most money because you can pay off your debt. Take the job that your heart is attached to.

I remember running into a science teacher in the suburbs of Chicago, a young woman fresh out of college. She was so happy to be teaching math at this great high school. I said: Is this what you wanted to do? She said: No. I wanted to teach in an inner-city school, but I couldn't do it because they don't pay as much money. I have student loans, you know. They pay me more out here in the suburbs, and I can pay off my loans and buy a car. So I made that choice. I wish I didn't have to, but I made that choice.

Repeat that story a thousand times, see that teachers who could have gone into areas where they are desperately needed now have a chance to succeed.

I tell my colleagues, as I look back on the things that made a difference in my life, laws that were passed that really changed my life, when this Congress made a commitment to loans to kids from families such as my own, at that point in time they gave me a chance. I stand in this Senate today because of it. Senator Kennedy, Senator Enzi, Congressman Miller, and others are going to provide those opportunities for thousands of young American kids.

I yield the floor.

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