Stop the Student Loan Interest Rate Hike Act of 2012--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, we are still here. We have not gotten much of a response from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle about our legislation that would help students throughout America pay their tuition costs and pay a reasonable amount of interest on their loans. I don't know what my colleagues are waiting for. We all know the crisis in America. College has become more and more important. To many, it is a necessity, and it has become more and more expensive. That equation is not only hurting the kids who go to college, it is hurting their families and hurting this country.

When the percentage of people who graduate from college declines vis-a-vis other nations, that is a very bad sign for America. We can talk about the problems of quality in our K 12 schools, and those are important issues, but our higher education system is still rating just about the best in the world. That is shown by the fact that hundreds of thousands from around the world, including places such as China and India, apply to our schools, come here and attend. It is a shame we send them back even if they want to stay, but that is an immigration issue not an education issue.

Our schools are great, and the big problem with higher education in America is not quality--although, of course, it could be made better--it is affordability. It is not the same as K 12.

Yet here we are, sitting here, and the other side is in a certain sense twiddling their thumbs and making it worse.

How is America going to stay the greatest economic power in the world when fewer and fewer of our bright, capable, hard-working students can afford college and when more and more of them decide they are not going to go to school or, if they go to school, not to the college of their choice for financial reasons?

We put a reasonable offer on the table. The proposal is we pay for our college tuition act by closing a loophole that people such as Rush Limbaugh said should be closed when John Edwards was found to have used it in his law firm, when other leading Republicans in 2004 said this is one of the greatest abuses of the Tax Code they had ever seen. All of a sudden our colleagues on the other side of the aisle say they cannot vote for it. This was an issue that was talked about as we talked about dealing with the budget gap in August or in December--during last year, whenever it was. Again, we did not hear objections from the other side: Take that one off the table, we can't live with it.

It seems what is going on is very simple. Our colleagues know that it is certainly politically unpopular, but probably it is politically wrong to allow interest rates to double. But they can't just say they are against it. They tried to say they are against it, but when the President went around the country and talked about it they had to back off that.

So in the House they came up with a pay-for which was sort of laughable. Everyone knew that would never pass, and no one took their position seriously. But we had always hoped that our colleagues in the Senate who, frankly, have been much more reasonable in the last little while--we passed a highway bill with bipartisan support, we passed a postal reform bill with bipartisan support, we passed the Violence Against Women Act with bipartisan support, and we thought we could get this done with bipartisan support.

Our goal is not to draw a difference between the parties--that has been apparent--but to get this done. We thought when we put our proposal on the Senate floor they would accept it. At minimum we thought they would at least come back with an offer: Let's debate it. Let's try and see if their amendment passes in terms of a different pay-for. Let's see if our amendment could get support. Instead, what have we found? A filibuster blocking the Senate from even considering this reasonable measure.

I am going to yield the floor because I see my colleagues have arrived, the Senator from Connecticut and the Senator from New Hampshire, who I know have strong beliefs about this issue. We have an all-New England cast in the room, with a little help from the Mid-Atlantic.

I hope they will reconsider. I hope they will reconsider because it is better for the politics of this country to come together once again on reasonable issues, as we have done in the past few months. It is better, frankly, for their own politics. I am not wishing them ill. But most of all, it is better for the future of our country. Please reconsider. Let's move forward and debate this bill and let's not let the high cost of going to college get unnecessarily higher.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source