Protecting Volunteer Firefighters And Emergency Responders Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I commend my colleague from New Mexico. It is difficult to put in words the way I feel about his effort on this subject.

It was first brought to my attention when there was a series in the Chicago Tribune about fire retardant chemicals in furniture. It turned out that many people who were making furniture were putting fire retardant chemicals in the fabric of the upholstery, as well as in the cushions of chairs and couches.

After further examination, we found that these chemicals were not, in fact, fire retardant, and secondly, they had properties that were dangerous and, frankly, should not be in our homes.

I thought about that series over and over again because my wife and I have two of the cutest grandkids on Earth who are a little over 3 years old. I thought to myself: Every time I plop down on the couch to play with the kids, I am pushing down on that cushion and spraying those chemicals into the room. I thought long and hard about it. I didn't know what those chemicals meant, what they could do to my grandkids or what they could do to innocent people. It never crossed my mind.

Senator Udall has taken on what is in many ways a thankless task but a very important one--to try to come up with some standards for new chemicals so they are reviewed and so we know they are safe for Americans and for families.

He has taken his share of grief in the process. I may have given him a little of grief along the way because it is a critically important subject. But he is right to invoke the name of Senator Frank Lautenberg.

The Senator's widow, Bonnie Lautenberg, was in to see me yesterday. We talked about Frank and all the things he had done over the years. He was my Senate sponsor when I was a House originator of the bill banning smoking on airplanes 25 years ago. Frank Lautenberg carried the flag over here in the Senate. He was my partner.

One of the last press conferences I ever had with him was on this subject, the toxic chemicals and the review of these chemicals. I remember that it was right outside.

I thank the Senator from New Mexico for continuing this. I am not one of the cosponsors, but I might be. I have three or four issues I want to sit down and go over with my friend and make sure I understand them and maybe suggest some changes. But I commend the Senator for sticking with this. I know it has not been easy. There are those who disagree with him, even within our own caucus.

Again, I thank the Senator for trying, on a bipartisan basis, to deal with an issue that we should deal with as a nation. I commend the Senator for that. I thank the Senator from New Mexico for his leadership.

FOR-PROFIT COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES

Madam President, for several years I have been coming to the floor and giving speeches--which some of the staff here can repeat because they have heard them so often--about the for-profit colleges and universities in America. I always preface my talk about these for-profit colleges and universities by saying: I am going to give you three numbers that are going to be on the final. So get out your pen and paper, students, because this will be on the final.

Ten percent of college students go to for-profit colleges and universities. Who are the for-profit colleges and universities? The biggest ones are the University of Phoenix, Kaplan University, DeVry University, and many others that I will mention. Ten percent of college students go to these colleges and universities that are run for profit. How do they find them? They cannot avoid them. Ask a high school student when the last time was that they logged in on the Internet with the word ``college'' or ``university'' and whether they were not inundated for ads to go to for-profit schools. They are on billboards and on television. They are everywhere. So 10 percent of students go to these schools. That is the first question on the final.

The second question: What percentage of Federal aid to education goes to for-profit colleges and universities? The answer is 20 percent--20 percent of Federal aid to education. Why so much? Ten percent of the students and 20 percent of the Federal aid?

These schools aren't cheap. They charge a lot of money. Students have to borrow a lot more money to go to school.

So the Federal aid to education, which includes student loans to for-profit schools, is 20 percent. Ten percent of the students; 20 percent of the Federal aid to education.

But here is the important number: 44. Forty-four percent of all of the student loan defaults in the United States are from students at for-profit colleges and universities. Why? Well, there are two reasons--maybe more but two that are obvious. They accept everyone. If a student is low income--particularly a minority student--they can't wait to bring them in the door. Why? Because they automatically qualify for about $5,000 in Pell grants that the school can get right away, and they automatically qualify for college loans because their family doesn't have a lot of money. So those are the great opportunity students: low-income students.

What happens to those students? They start in these schools. They sign up and pay to the schools what they can afford. They take their grant money and give it to the schools, and then they sign up for student loans and they start their classes. Then they find, for a variety of reasons, they can't continue. Maybe they are not ready for college. Maybe--just maybe--they start adding up all of the loans they have taken out and say, I have to stop; it is getting too much--because the indebtedness of students coming out of for-profit colleges and universities is twice what it is for those who go to public universities. It is a very expensive undertaking.

Then there is the other category: those who finally finish at these for-profit colleges and universities but can't get a job. One of them was at a press conference with me last Monday in Chicago--a sweet young woman who was born in West Virginia and raised in Eastern Kentucky. She moved to Chicago, went to Everest College in Chicago, a for-profit school owned by Corinthian Colleges. She didn't quite finish, but she spent several years there. Then she learned something after she went out looking for a job. The employers would look at her and say: Corinthian, that is not a good college. Why did you go there? Don't put that on your resume. Stop putting that on your resume because it makes you look bad.

Here she is in debt $20,000 to this for-profit college and her employers are saying stop putting that on your resume; it is not a real college.

This poor young woman, now in City Colleges, is trying, at a very young age, to put it back together again.

So that is where we start: for-profit colleges and universities, 10 percent of the students, 20 percent of the Federal aid to education, and 44 percent of all of the student loan defaults.

I have been giving this speech on the floor for literally years saying something is wrong. Why are we accrediting these schools that have such dismal records? Why are we looking the other way when the students who go to these schools have massive debt and can't pay back their student loans? When are we going to wake up as a Federal Government and stop shoveling hundreds of millions--and billions--of dollars at this industry?

For-profit colleges and universities' share of Federal aid to education--if it were a separate line item in the Federal budget, would be the ninth largest Federal agency. That is how much money we send to these people. These are for-profit, private sector companies--baloney. Their revenues--80 to 95 percent of their revenues come right from the Treasury. This is the most heavily subsidized industry in America.

But now something historic has happened. Corinthian Colleges, one of the largest for-profit colleges and universities, announced its bankruptcy last week, and that isn't the end of the story. Yesterday, Career Education Corporation, headquartered in my home State of Illinois, announced it would teach out, which means close, its 14 Sanford-Brown institutions across the country and online. This follows the decision to close its Harrington College of Design in Chicago and to look for a buyer for its Le Cordon Bleu culinary schools. Ever heard of those? I can guarantee my colleagues that high school kids have heard of them. I have run into students at these places.

Harrington College of Design. I cannot tell my colleagues how many students went there, took out the loans, and found out it was worthless, and then contacted my office and asked, What are we supposed to do next?

I had a hearing on for-profit colleges and universities in Chicago and there were students from these for-profit colleges picketing ``Durbin is unfair.'' I went out to the students and I said: Where do you go to school?

One student said: I go to the Institute of Art of Chicago. Now, there is a Chicago Art Institute, but this play on words turned out to be significant.

I said: What are you studying there?

The student said: I am going to be a super chef.

Oh, really. How much is it going to cost you to take the culinary courses to be a super chef?

It is $54,000 in tuition.

To be a chef? I have asked the major restaurants in Chicago; they don't even want to see those degrees. They don't look for them. They don't value them. These poor kids, these young men and women who watch these cooking shows on TV and get all caught up in it and say, That is for me, end up getting suckered into these schools.

Le Cordon Bleu is another one. Le Cordon Bleu--doesn't that sound great? My wife has a cookbook that says that on it. These students quickly sign up for this French-sounding culinary school and get in debt and deeply in trouble. Now they are in more trouble because the school is in the process of going out of business.

In a public statement about their decision, CEO Ron McCray of Career Education Corporation blamed a more difficult higher education environment and challenging regulatory environment. Do people know what the challenge is? The Department of Education is finally challenging these schools when they say to the Department, Oh, our kids all get jobs--when they graduate, they all get jobs.

When they challenged Corinthian Colleges, here is what they found out. Corinthian graduates would be employed--check the box--after they graduate for about 30 days, sometimes less. Corinthian had cooked a deal with employers to hire their graduates for 30 days, and it paid them to do it, and they were caught redhanded and eventually went out of business. Fraud--fraud in reporting to the government, fraud on the taxpayers leading to the collapse of Corinthian Colleges.

Career Education Corporation, incidentally, is under investigation--this for-profit school--by 17 different State attorneys general relating to recruitment practices and graduate placement statistics, among other things. In 2013, this company, Career Education Corporation, settled with the New York attorney general for 10 million bucks. The company is on the Heightened Cash Monitoring list, meaning they are suspect, of the U.S. Department of Education.

What else happened yesterday? This is all within the last 2 weeks.

Education Management Corporation--EDMC--announced that it was going to close 15 of these art institute campuses. Remember that one? I told my colleagues about that costs $54,000 tuition to become a cook? They are going to close 15 of these campuses, including reportedly one in Tinley Park, IL. They have been financially faltering for some time. They

had recently tried to do a debt restructuring which apparently didn't work. They are currently being sued by the Department of Justice for false claims violations.

The Justice Department alleges that this one, Education Management Corporation, falsely certified compliance with provisions of the Federal law that prohibit the university from paying financial incentives to its admissions staff that is tied to the number of students they recruit. We made it a law that said you can't pay a bounty for bringing in kids and signing up in the school. They did it anyway.

In addition, this company is under investigation by 17 State attorneys general, just like the other one, related to, among other things, marketing and recruitment. EDMC is also on the Department of Education's Heightened Cash Monitoring list.

Let me say a word about ITT Tech. We have to watch the names of these places because they sound like real schools. We have an Illinois Institute of Technology that is a real university, one of the best in the Nation--one of the best in the world--when it comes to engineering and science. So along comes a for-profit school and makes a little change. It is ITT Tech, hoping the Illinois students will not catch it. They are another company under heavy scrutiny.

They have been sued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for predatory lending to students. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau alleges that ITT pushed students into high-cost private loans that they knew were going to end in default. Sometimes these students are still eligible for government loans at low interest rates and good terms and these schools don't care. They push them into private loans with high interest rates.

Do my colleagues know how high the interest rates on the student loans were from private lenders to these kids at ITT Tech? How about 16.25 percent. Think about that for a minute. At a time when the interest rates in our country are at rock bottom, these kids were paying 16 percent to the lenders for private loans.

There is something else we should know. Unlike virtually any other loan that we take out in America, student loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy. No matter how deep a hole these kids get into--and their families--no matter how deep the hole, if they go bankrupt over student loans, they can't discharge them in bankruptcy. Student loans follow you to the grave. That is what these kids at age 19 and 20 are getting into. Sadly, these for-profit schools are dragging them in that direction.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau believes ITT misrepresented the basics, including how often you can get a job, the quality of the diploma. Does this sound familiar? It is a recurring theme in this industry. ITT is under investigation by everybody in sight: 15 State attorneys general, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the New Mexico attorney general is suing them, and ITT is on the Department of Education's Heightened Cash Monitoring list.

What happens when these schools go bankrupt, when they close or teach out and finish? Well, Corinthian ended up closing many of their campuses a week or so ago and now the students who are in debt because they went to school there have an opportunity. They can walk away from the credits they earned at a Corinthian college and then walk away from their college debt associated with them since their school closed. But some of these other students will not be so lucky. They will have ended their education at these worthless schools and have a mountain of debt to show for it and the school will go out of business.

This isn't fair. There comes a point where we are supposed to step in, the government is supposed to step in. This is our money, hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers going to these rotten schools that are abusing students, leaving them deeply in debt and then going out of business.

We shouldn't be surprised to learn that the CEOs of these schools do quite well. The CEO of Corinthian College that went bankrupt: $3 million a year--not bad for what turned out to be a fraudulent enterprise.

That is why this week I joined several of my colleagues and sent a letter to the Department of Justice. The Department of Education said we don't know how to go after these individual wrongdoers at these for-profit college corporations. So we said to the Attorney General: We hope you will investigate this. Take a look at it. If you cheat on your income tax or you defraud the government, you are going to be held responsible for it. Why shouldn't these people who took hundreds of millions of dollars not only from Federal taxpayers but at the expense of students now burdened with the debt of their schools also be investigated? I think it only stands to reason they should be.

Madam President, I have another statement to make, but I see two of my colleagues. I will come back a little later in the day.

I yield the floor.

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