Providing for Consideration of H.R. 5715, Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act of 2008
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 5715, ENSURING CONTINUED ACCESS TO STUDENT LOANS ACT OF 2008 -- (House of Representatives - April 16, 2008)
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Mr. WELCH of Vermont. I thank my colleague, the Member from Florida, and I also thank the chairman of the committee and the ranking member, Representative Miller and Representative McKeon.
This whole question of the affordability of higher education we know is a crushing burden on middle class families. And it has been made much worse, as many of the speakers have pointed out, by the credit crisis, innocent victims caught up in the consequences of credit-gone-wild in the
subprime mortgage. So I really appreciate, and I think all of us appreciate, the quick work of the committee to provide flexibility in financing that's going to be beneficial to working families across this country.
One of the questions that has been on the mind of many of us, I think, on both sides of the aisle, however, is whether or not when we go to the well and ask taxpayers to put more money into student aid, as we've done and as we should do, and when we make loan eligibility more generous so families pinch themselves in order to take on additional debt and students take on additional debt, the question we're starting to ask is whether or not that becomes a way in which institutions of higher education simply increase tuition. And then at the end of the day, you find that the families are increasing their debt load. Their kids are going to school, but they're graduating with a mountain of debt that's equal to the mortgage on the house that many of us, when we first bought our home, is equal to.
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So Representative Castle had an idea, and I joined with him, to ask for the first time to get a study from the General Services Administration to see what connection exists between tuition going up as student aid, both grants and loans, increases.
I am pleased that the committee has seen fit to support this amendment that Congressman Castle and I are offering because we have to do two things if we're going to make college affordable: One is, we've got to make grants and loans available to our students and the families. But two, we really have to ask the institutions of higher education to do something on the cost side. And that's the intent of this amendment, to start getting information that will be available to us to consider whether enough is being done on the cost side.
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