[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 100 (Friday, June 29, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H4636-H4637]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     LET'S CONTINUE THE GREAT WORK

  (Mr. COURTNEY asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. COURTNEY. Mr. Speaker, with a few minutes to spare, we just voted 
to make sure that the interest rate for the Stafford student loan 
program was going to stay at 3.4 and avoid the doubling of rates, which 
would have happened Saturday night if we had not acted. This is an 
issue which took months to get to. President Obama challenged Congress 
back at the State of the Union in January, telling us that we must act. 
It took months to get any response. And I want to congratulate the 
130,000 college students all across America who submitted a petition to 
the Speaker's office saying it was time to get moving.
  We started the countdown clock on that day at Day 110, and now we are 
officially defusing the time bomb that would have exploded with a 
higher interest rate if we had not acted. We have a lot more work to do 
with the high cost of college and student loan debt, which now exceeds 
credit card debt and consumer loan debt. But having said that, we saw 
today an honest

[[Page H4637]]

compromise; people coming together to make sure that that lower rate 
was going to be extended. Let's use that example to move forward and 
solve this problem for middle class families all across America.
  Again, to those students who worked so hard to have their voices 
heard, congratulations. Let's roll up our sleeves and continue the 
great work.

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