Smarter Solutions for Students Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. COURTNEY. Mr. Speaker, it is amazing. At a time when we know that student loan debt now has skyrocketed above all other forms of consumer debt--credit card debt, car loan debt--and students are now graduating, on average, with over $25,000 of student loan debt, a ticking clock 38 days away where the rates are going to double, the bill that the majority has come forward with makes the problem worse, not better.

Again, the analysis from independent sources--the ones that we rely on to make decisions in this body, the Congressional Budget Office and the Congressional Research Office--make it clear that if we do nothing, the interest costs for the average Stafford loan will add $4,000 in interest payments. If we pass this bill, the interest will rise by $5,000. So the notion that this is somehow a solution to the problem, the misnomer that this bill is given, the reverse is true.

Mr. Speaker, we know that the Senate is not going to move over the next 38 days; they're doing the farm bill, they're doing immigration reform. It is time to protect students by extending the 3.4 percent rate, a rate, which I hasten to add, that was passed in 2007 with a large bipartisan majority, signed into law by George Bush, was extended again last year with large bipartisan majorities, signed by President Obama. Let's do a 2-year extension, and then let's get to work with a 5-year Higher Education Reauthorization Act.

The problem with higher ed is not about Stafford loans only; it's about Pell grants, it's about Perkins loans. It's about students not being given good information in high school. It's about allowing graduates to refinance their debt, which they are now confronted with large barriers to. That's the real work to solve the higher education challenge and issue in this country. In the mean time, let's extend the 2-year rates.

Mr. Speaker, I have letters from 21 campus-based organizations representing real live college students all across America who support the Democratic measure to extend those rates, get a good higher education authorization bill, and totally--totally--reject the measure that's on the floor today, the Make College More Expensive Act.

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