[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 81 (Tuesday, May 16, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H5054-H5055]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                 EDUCATION ASSISTANCE VITAL FOR AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Camp). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from West Virginia [Mr. Wise] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. WISE. Mr. Speaker, today while we are all talking about the 
budget, I would like to talk some about growth, because the reality is 
that you do not cut your way out of this kind of deficit problem, $1.2 
or $1.4 trillion worth of cuts, cutting every program 30 percent across 
the board. You certainly do not 
[[Page H5055]] tax your way out of it. You are going to have to have a 
strong element of economic growth. My concern about this budget that 
will be on the floor today and tomorrow, the Republican budget out 
there for review, actually Wednesday and Thursday, is that what this 
budget does is it goes after growth.
  Let me give you an example why. I hold here thousands of petition 
signatures of West Virginia college students and high school students, 
and I am willing to bet some parents, all who signed petitions 
circulated across our State in just the last couple of weeks urging 
Congress not to adopt the student loan cuts that are proposed in this 
budget. Whether it is West Virginia University, Shepherd College, 
Glenville, Fairmont State, University of Charleston, D&E, Davis and 
Elkins, you name it, 16 colleges and universities participate in this 
program, sending petitions under our own name, SAVE, Save America Via 
Education. They organized this effort themselves. They circulated the 
petitions, got up on Internet. The message is clear to Congress, 
thousands of people saying ``Do not cut student loans.''
  Basically what is proposed to be cut is the Stafford Student Loan 
Program, the one that pays the interest while the student is in college 
and for 6 months thereafter.
  Does it make much of a difference? It adds something like 20 to 50 
percent to the lifetime cost of that loan. Many of these students 
somewhere along the road, and I visited many of the locations, said to 
me if that had been in effect I would not be able to be in college 
today; I would not be able to be in school today.
  I have heard some say lightly, well, $21 a month, maybe that is all 
it is going to be. One CD, one music CD. Rubbish. For many people, $21 
a month is a lot of money over a number of years. It is more in many 
cases, such as the nontraditional students, the
 mother who has put herself through a 4-year program, now getting an 
MBA, who said her daughter is now getting ready to enter undergraduate 
school, who told me how it would have been impossible at $21 more a 
month to have accomplished that.

  Why is this so important? It is so important because, getting back to 
growth for a second, the opportunities created by a college education 
mean that our economy will grow at record levels. Those of you older 
than 40 or 50 remember the impact of the GI bill, when millions of 
veterans came home from the war and were able to get that education.
  The Department of Labor estimates that everyone who finishes college 
on the average will have a 60-percent higher lifetime income than those 
that do not. This college education clearly is a ticket to success, not 
only for individuals, but also for our society.
  There is also a problem with college classrooms. If you have less 
people able to attend college, and, incidentally, since 1979 the median 
income has gone up roughly 88 percent, I believe it is, while the 
tuition costs have gone up more than double that. So family income does 
not keep up with tuition income, which means these programs are more 
important. But there is also the very real fact that even those able to 
pay the full amount of tuition will find less students in school and 
therefore less classes available.
  This is not a partisan issue. This is parents. It is teachers. It is 
students. It is anyone concerned about higher education. These 
thousands of students from across West Virginia have recognized clearly 
the impact this has.
  Incidentally, it is not an interest loan deferral for all their 
lives; it is only for the time they are in school. they pay these loans 
back. But what the Federal Government does is to assist them in making 
sure they do not pay interest while they are actually in school.
  So I would urge Members not to support this Republican proposal to 
cut student loans. While I am here, let me note I found of interest, it 
was just a month ago as I traveled the State when Republicans were 
asked about this. They said we have no intentions to do that. Today it 
is in the budget in a bigger way than I ever dreamed. I thought it was 
going to be $16 billion. It is 33 billion dollars' worth of cuts.
  So to respond to those who signed these petitions, this battle is 
going to go on over the summer and fall, and we urge many more people 
to make their voices heard. If you want to talk about growth, growth in 
our children, growth in our society, growth in our economy, then we 
cannot be cutting the student loans. I would urge rejection of the 
budget for that reason alone.

                          ____________________