Nomination of Sylvia Mathews Burwell to be Secretary of Health and Human Services

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am very proud to begin a conversation on the floor with a number of my colleagues about one of the most urgent and pressing challenges that face us as a body here in Washington, making laws, but even more preeminently to families and students around the country who literally, right now, are sitting at their kitchen tables, in their living rooms, in family gatherings, trying to find a path forward in financing their education, their children's education, their grandchildren's education.

We must do better as a nation. We have to do better in giving a fair shot to them--to the innovators and entrepreneurs and investors of the future--the people who will power our economy with ideas and energy as a result of college education, which is part of the American dream--part of giving everybody in America a fair shot at that dream.

I have been doing a lot of listening over these past weeks, over these past 3 1/2 years, and over three decades in public service. I think listening is one of the most important things we do as public officials. There is an old saying that God gave us two ears and one mouth so that maybe we do a little more listening than talking. When I talk to students--and I have been doing a lot of that at commencement addresses and classrooms and roundtables around the State of Connecticut--I tell them I want to listen. What I have been hearing at Ansonia High School and Windham High School and The Stanwich School--high schools around the State of Connecticut--is they are seeing dreams crushed by the cost of college education. The pages who are here today, our children, when we go home at night can tell us about how devastating these costs are, how their hopes and aspirations for the future are constrained and sometimes crippled financially by the cost of college education. We must bring it down. The costs of tuition and expenses must be reduced.

At the same time, we need to find better financing options for our students. That is the reason we are reintroducing today the Bank on Students Emergency Loan Refinancing Act, with some minor changes, because we have listened to people who have told us improvements that could be made in that measure. But, most importantly, we have listened to students, both the high school students and college students, who are telling us about dreams deferred and dreams devastated by the costs of college education. So we must make sure that the $1.2 trillion that overhangs them and our economy is addressed.

This measure would help the students of today and tomorrow. It would help the students of today because it offers promise for the future, and the students who already have debt would be able to reduce that debt. Those students who are paying 7 or 8 or 10 or 11 percent would be able to reduce it, refinance, not just--we all do refinancing of our home loans and our car loans right now. There is no possibility of doing it with student debt loan, and that is what this measure would enable them to do. For folks who have graduated and who cannot start families, begin businesses, buy homes, contribute to our economy, it would enable them to accomplish those dreams rather than deferring or abandoning them.

I am often heartbroken, as I talk to people who have these debts. They did the right thing; they played by the rules, went to college, and now find themselves crushed by that debt. Those who are laboring under these crushing debt loans often have pursued careers in medicine and other professions such as nursing that would enable them to do an enormous good for this country if they were helped, if that crushing burden were somehow reduced. Giving them a fair shot is good for our economy because it will increase consumer demand. It is also good for our social fabric--literally economically, socially, and physically good for our health by enabling some of those doctors and nurses to work in communities that are underserved right now.

We ought to give them public service options, enable some of that debt to be paid down or paid off through community and public service. But the measure I think we can agree is urgent and pressing, where there ought to be consensus, is enabling the commonsense refinancing of current debt.

There are other measures that are vitally important, such as clarifying and requiring more accuracy and truth in the forms that are given to students at the time they take these loans so they know what their debt will be; enabling more of them to have grants rather than loans, bringing down the cost of tuition; enabling more public service options as a means to pay down or pay off debt. But let's focus right now on what is clearly an imperative--a moral imperative and a social imperative for our Nation--to enable more refinancing right now. For federal student loans that were originated in the years between 2007 and 2012, the government will make $66 billion. Mr. President, $66 billion. That money goes into the U.S. Treasury fund when, in fact, instead it should be invested in our students and our communities.

I urge my colleagues to join in this effort and to focus on those additional measures we can achieve.

I see my colleague from Illinois is here. He has championed and I have been pleased to join him in efforts to enable student debt to be discharged in bankruptcy. One of the great, gaping gaps in our present bankruptcy system is that students cannot find any relief from this student debt. Almost every other form of debt can be discharged from bankruptcy but not student debt.

So there are other measures we can and should achieve, but a fair shot for everyone ought to begin right now with this measure on the floor, enabling students and former students to refinance so they have the best shot at paying off those loans and a fair shot at the American dream.

I yield the floor.

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