Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2014 -- Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, first, let me join the Texas Chamber of Commerce and everyone else and thank Senator Cornyn for his promotional speech on behalf of the State of Texas. He is very proud of his State. I am sure I would be too if I represented it. I represent a State called Illinois, and we are pretty happy with what we have in our State. If the Senator's Governor comes in looking for jobs and he looks longingly at Lake Michigan and they wish they had some water in Texas, we have a lot of it and a lot of other things too.

Each of us is proud of our State, and I am not going to sit here and go through a tick list, even if I could, of what is wrong with Texas. I would like to speak to some of the national issues, though, that the Senator from Texas raised.

What about this ObamaCare? If you listen to the description by the Senator from Texas, it is the big hand of government coming down and raising the cost of health insurance for Americans.

Well, why would they do that? Why would Congress pass something like that? It turns out that is not even part of the story. Here is the story: Too many Americans today do not have health insurance. They still get sick. And when they get sick, what do they do? They go to the hospital--usually the emergency room--and they get treated.

If they do not have the money through health insurance to pay for it, how does it get paid for? Raise your hand America. If you own an insurance policy, you are paying for the care of those without health insurance, transferring the cost of their care to the rest of America. Is that fair to your family or to your business or to you? No.

The idea behind ObamaCare was to extend the reach of health insurance to more Americans. We tried this. The Senator from Texas talks about the States as laboratories of experiment. We tried this experiment under someone named Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. He came up with the original ObamaCare, RomneyCare in Massachusetts, and said: Everybody in the State is going to have health insurance. It is working.

We are trying to do this on a national basis so everyone is engaged in paying for their health care and so everyone has the peace of mind of being protected with a health insurance policy. What about these policies? There is another thing not raised by the Senator from Texas. What good is a health insurance policy if it is not there when you need it? What good is a health insurance policy if it has a limit on how much it will pay and someone you love in your family just got diagnosed with a serious cancer illness and now faces surgeries, chemo, radiation that could run into the tens of thousands of dollars well beyond the coverage of your policy?

That is when people face reality. That is what ObamaCare was all about. Take the lifetime limits off health insurance so that if some unpredictable accident, disease or illness comes your way, it will not bankrupt your family and you can still get good care. Those who want to abolish ObamaCare ought to answer the basic question: Do you want to go back to lifetime limits when it comes to health insurance?

There is another element too. We have some younger people in the Senate. But some of us have been around. Many of us are in a position where preexisting conditions apply to all of us. If you had to fill out that questionnaire, there is probably something in your background, if you are in your fifties, sixties or beyond, that would be characterized as a preexisting condition. It might mean, in the old days, health insurance companies would say: No thanks. We do not want to run the risk of somebody who has high blood pressure, someone who has a prediabetes condition, someone with a person in their family with mental illness.

So they would not sell you the health insurance--preexisting conditions. In America, almost every family has one, whether it is a child or someone who is up in years. ObamaCare says stop discriminating against Americans under health insurance policies for preexisting conditions.

When we hear the Republicans talk about eliminating ObamaCare, do they want to go back to the day when you could not even buy a health insurance policy with a preexisting condition?

What about this issue of insurance through your business where you work? It turns out 96 percent of the businesses in America today would not be mandated to provide health insurance coverage. They already do or they would not be required under the law. We are talking about a small percentage but an important percentage. The President said he will give us an additional year to make sure we get this right and work with business for the right solution. I think that is reasonable. I have said it before, and I will say it again, when it comes to writing laws, the only perfect law ever written was written on clay tablets and carried down a mountain by Senator Moses.

Ever since then, we have done our best and we can always do better. But here is the problem: The National Restaurant Association came to Chicago about 6 weeks ago, genuinely concerned about ObamaCare and what it meant to their industry. I listened to them. I said: I am willing to sit down with you. Let's find a way to help you and businesses just like you provide health insurance that is affordable for your employees, that is the right thing for them. I said: I will tell you what. I guarantee you, if you are willing to sit down and work out changes in ObamaCare in a good-faith way, I will bring Democratic Senators to the table. All I ask you is bring Republican House Members to the table.

They cannot do it. You know why? The Presiding Officer knows why because she served in the House of Representatives. Because on 67 separate occasions since we passed ObamaCare, the Republicans in the House and Senate have called for votes to abolish ObamaCare--67 times. Someone--Dana Milbank, I believe, in the Washington Post--made that calculation just last week--67 times.

They have been unwilling to sit down and talk about any changes. No, we want to abolish it. Then we will talk. It does not work that way. In the real world, we try to solve these problems as we go. I know this ObamaCare is important to this country. I think it may be the most important bill I ever voted on--because I have been there. I was a young father, a law student, married with a baby with a serious medical problem. I had no health insurance. If you ever felt helpless as an individual, as a father, as a husband, get yourself in that position. There are millions of Americans who face that every single day: no health insurance and a heartbreaking illness in their family. Let's put an end to that. This country is far better than that. Let's aspire to something that truly provides peace of mind to those across America.

There are several other provisions in this bill I will mention before I talk about higher education. Under ObamaCare, we make certain that families with children under the age of 26 can keep their kids under their health insurance policy, the family's health insurance policy. Why is that important? Because young people coming fresh out of college may not have a job or they may have a job without health insurance. These young people can now stay under their parents' policy, over 100,000 in my State of Illinois.

When I hear the Republicans call for abolishing ObamaCare, I do not hear them calling for abolishing that. That is something families need and want. In our closing the doughnut hole--that is the amount of out-of-pocket expense seniors have to pay for Medicare prescriptions. ObamaCare closes that so the out-of-pocket expenses diminish and eventually disappear. That is a good thing for many seniors faced with fixed incomes. I do not hear the Republicans calling for abolishing that either and they should not.

The Senator from Texas raised the question about the cost of higher education. He is right. I believe he characterized it by saying, under the Obama administration, the cost of higher education has gone up dramatically. It is true it did happen after the President was elected, but I did not hear the suggestion from the Senator from Texas that President Obama mandated it or caused it.

What is happening across America is that States, because of their own budget problems, are cutting back on aid to higher education. Colleges, mainly public institutions, are raising the cost of tuition, and that raises the debt the students end up with when they go to school. It has nothing do with President Obama.

It is a fact, a serious fact, which brings us to the issue that will be on the floor this week, student loans. Currently, the student loan interest rate for subsidized loans, and that is for families having $30,000 in income or less, is 6.8 percent. Just a few weeks ago it was 3.4 percent. Now it is 6.8 percent. So the question is, Are we going to change it? Are we going to try to bring down that interest rate?

Yes, we should. Students are deeply in debt, too deeply in debt. If we can reduce the cost of what they borrow, we should. Let me add a caveat. Students need to think twice about borrowing. Of course they should go to college, but many of them are being lured into schools that are dramatically overpriced. Some of them are not worth it. That is a fact.

The for-profit college industry is a good illustration. Ask a high school student if they know what a for-profit school is, they will say: I am not sure. What is it? It is the one that hits you right between the eyes on the Internet every time you log on. Those are the for-profit schools that are literally companies that make money off of offering education.

The largest, the University of Phoenix. The combined enrollment at the University of Phoenix is larger than the combined enrollment of the Big Ten schools; No. 2, Kaplan, which owns the Washington Post; and No. 3, DeVry out of Chicago. Those are the three big ones. What about those schools? There are three numbers to remember about for-profit schools if you want to know. About 12 percent of all of the kids coming out of high school go to for-profit schools. The for-profit schools receive 25 percent of all the Federal aid to education. The for-profit schools account for 47 percent of all the student loan defaults.

Why? They charge too much. Their diplomas are worth too little. The good advice to young people is: Start with your community college, if you do not have a clear path for higher education--affordable, many choices. In most States those hours are transferable. But students are making high-cost choices and getting high-cost debt.

So now we are discussing what to do about it. This morning my friend, the Senator from Vermont, the Independent Democrat, Bernie Sanders came to the floor and talked about the plight of young people. He is right. They are too deeply in debt. There are too few jobs available. I worry about them, as everyone should.

He concluded, though, at the end, we should not vote for the bipartisan student loan reform bill we are working on in the Senate. I have to disagree with my colleague. Here is the reality. The interest rate today for undergraduate students is at least 6.8 percent on their student loans. Our bipartisan plan reduces that to 3.8 percent, a 3-percent savings for each student borrowing--undergrad student borrowing for the loans they need to go to school.

Three percent makes a difference: 6.8, 3.8 makes a big difference. Also, we make it clear that these students are going to be protected in the long run from high interest rates. We put a cap on the interest rates that students will ever have to pay under our plan of 8.25 percent for undergrad students. That to me is a sensible approach to take.

We are trying to find a way to lower this even further. I believe in the premise that the Federal Government should be more actively involved to reduce the interest rate even more. But this is a good outcome. For the next 4 or 5 years, students at all levels are going to see lower interest payments than if we do nothing. Some of my colleagues are upset. They do not like this outcome. They would like to see a much different relationship between the Federal Government and the students and their families. I would too. But I know where the votes are.

With the Republican House of Representatives, with the need for 60 votes in this Chamber, that type of reform is not likely to occur. So I urge my colleagues, when the time comes to vote on student loans and the student loan interest rate, do not leave us in a position where we keep the 6.8 percent interest rate. Let us bring it down to 3.8 percent, a more affordable rate. That is good for these students and their families. Then let's join with Senator Harkin and Senator Alexander for higher education reform, to look at the overall cost of higher education, to work with the President and find ways to reduce the cost of education and to make sure we provide the education and training our students need to compete in the 21st century.

I yield the floor.

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