Student Loan Interest Rates

Floor Speech

Mr. COURTNEY. Mr. Speaker, in 2 days, at midnight, by law, the interest rates for the subsidized Stafford student loan program will double, from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent, raising interest rates for 7.5 million college students at exactly the time they are taking out loans for next fall's semester.

What a terrible statement about this Congress that we failed to move forward with legislation to protect those rates. My legislation, H.R. 1595, which had 195 discharge signatures, would have protected that rate.

Again, the leadership of this House turned a deaf ear and insisted that their bill, passed on May 23, somehow protected those college students. The Congressional Budget Office looked at that bill that passed that day, and it concluded that that bill was worse than doing nothing and allowing the rates to double to 6.8 percent. It is, again, a bill which will put kids into a variable rate system that, over time, we know will be higher than 6.8 percent.

I think of the disgust that America will feel on July 1 when they see that a critical need--higher education--was overlooked and ignored on top of the failure to turn off sequester and to pass a farm bill. It is time for this Congress to act and to protect the lower interest rates for America's college students.

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