[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 85 (Tuesday, June 3, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3354-S3359]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NOMINATION OF SHARON Y. BOWEN TO BE A COMMISSIONER OF THE COMMODITY
FUTURES TRADING COMMISSION--Continued
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the time until 4
p.m. will be equally divided between the two leaders or their
designees.
Who yields time? If neither side yields time, all time will be
equally charged.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, we are not in a quorum call, are we?
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Manchin). The Senator is correct.
EPA Rule
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, 17 years ago the Senate voted on something
called a sense-of-the-Senate resolution designed to protect American
workers and their families from misguided policy with regard to
CO2 regulations. Of course, CO2, or carbon
dioxide, is a necessary element of life, and plant life depends on
CO2 for photosynthesis, which helps make them green. To hear
some of the psuedoscientists talk about CO2 here in
Washington, you would think it was poison. Suffice it to say, 17 years
later the Obama administration is trying to enact similar legislation
that was rejected 17 years ago by the Senate in that sense-of-the-
Senate resolution.
Back in 1997 Members of the Senate were concerned that the Clinton
administration might sign a global climate change treaty that imposed
higher costs on the United States while exempting developing countries
such as China or India. These concerns turned out to be well-founded.
The Clinton administration did indeed sign such a treaty known as the
Kyoto Protocol in December of that year, but it never got around to
having it ratified here in the Senate largely because of a unanimous
resolution this Chamber passed several months earlier.
The sense-of-the-Senate resolution I alluded to a moment ago was
voted on in July 1997, and it received 95 votes in favor and 0 votes
opposed. Ninety-five Senators expressed their opposition to any climate
change agreement that would result in serious harm to the economy of
the United States. They also rejected any agreement that failed to
include other countries, and that is for good reasons I will explain in
a moment.
The message sent by these 95 Senators--a unanimous vote in the
Senate--is pretty clear. It makes absolutely no sense for America to
adopt job-killing carbon regulations while CO2 emissions
from developing countries continue to skyrocket and are not subjected
to the same restrictions.
Don't just take my word for it. Listen to what one of the most
prominent supporters of the 1997 resolution, Secretary of State John
Kerry--at the time he was the junior Senator of Massachusetts--had to
say:
It's just common sense that if you are really going to do
something to effect global climate change, and you are going
to do it in a fair-minded way . . . we need to have an
agreement that does not leave enormous components of the
world's contributors and future contributors of this problem
out of the solution.
In effect, what he was saying was: Why would America do this to
itself and throw a wet blanket on job creation and economic growth when
other countries were going to continue to produce CO2
unabated?
One of the cosponsors of this resolution was the late Democratic
Senator Robert Byrd. The Presiding Officer knows Senator Byrd and his
legacy very well. While explaining his opposition to the Kyoto-style
climate deals, Senator Byrd said:
I don't think the Senate should support a treaty that
requires only half of the world . . . to endure the economic
costs of reducing emissions while developing countries are
free to pollute the atmosphere, and in so doing, siphon off
American industries.
Another cosponsor was Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, who was then
the junior Senator from Nebraska. He described the likely consequences
of Kyoto-style agreements in these terms:
As industries flee the United States and other
industrialized countries, they would re-establish themselves
in developing countries that have much weaker environmental
standards than our own.
I have just one more point about the Kyoto Protocol, which was
unanimously voted down, in essence, 17 years ago.
A year after that, in 1998, there was a then-unknown Illinois State
senator who voted on legislation that denounced Kyoto and prohibited
State regulation of greenhouse gases in Illinois. If you guessed it was
Barack Obama, you would be right.
[[Page S3355]]
One of the State senators voting in favor of the bill, condemning
Kyoto, and banning State regulations of greenhouse gases in Illinois
was Barack Obama. President Obama voted for legislation that explicitly
rejected the type of CO2 regulations that he is now trying
to impose on the entire U.S. economy.
Yesterday I discussed some of the costs of those regulations, how
enormous they would be, and how they would disproportionately fall on
the poor and middle class in our country. The truth is most of the
burden of higher energy costs would fall on retired people, seniors,
and people on a fixed income.
In my State our electricity capacity is regularly strained due to the
hot August summers. People in my State depend on their air conditioners
for safety. The threat of limited access to electricity, or higher
costs that people can't afford, literally threatens their health and
safety, and certainly their welfare. Lost jobs, lost wages, higher
utility rates, and tighter family budgets are the inevitable
consequences of this proposed EPA rule that was announced late last
week.
For that matter, the EPA has also proposed another rule on new
powerplants that would impede technological innovation. Several of my
Democratic colleagues expressed their deep concern about the additional
EPA rule in a recent letter to the President. These seven Democrats
noted that ``American technology providers would be incentivized to
stop research and innovation in coal combustion, further delaying
domestic development of pioneering new technologies that could be
exported to improve plants around the world.''
Earlier today one of these Democrats who signed the letter, and
happens to be the Presiding Officer at this time, said the Obama
administration was ``working against us'' on CO2
regulations, and he described the EPA proposals as ``unreasonable and
unacceptable.'' This is obviously not a partisan issue by any means.
Any regulation that is this costly is almost impossible to justify
unless it was to have clear benefits that outweighed those costs.
President Obama's EPA rule can't lay claim to having enormous benefits
in spite of these huge costs.
Even if you agree with my friends about the long-term risks posed by
rising CO2 emissions, and that this sort of regulation is
justified, the projected growth of global emissions over the coming
decades has almost nothing to do with America and almost everything to
do with developing countries such as China and India.
Indeed, our emissions have gone down over recent history. Some of
that has been due to the renaissance of natural gas, which burns
cleaner. But the fact is that anything we would do would be confined to
the United States and our economy and would have no impact whatsoever
on developing countries such as China and India. Indeed, China--by a
very wide margin--is already the planet's largest CO2
emitter. The U.S. Government estimates that China alone will account
for nearly half of all growth in worldwide emissions between 2010 and
2040.
In short, nothing America does by itself or to itself will stop
global emissions from rising. In fact, even if we could magically
reduce our own emissions to zero over the next quarter century,
worldwide emissions would still increase significantly without major
reductions in China, India, and other developing countries.
Yet, despite all these costs to American workers and American
families--literally a threat due to the lack of grid capacity in places
such as Texas because of high-priced energy--President Obama is moving
ahead with this massive new energy tax that is effectively, in the
words of our colleague from Louisiana, all pain and no gain, and he is
right.
To put this in context, I think it is important that anyone who
happens to be listening understands a few points.
No. 1, regardless of what the President calls it, the proposed EPA
rule is indeed a massive new national energy tax, one that will affect
all workers, all consumers, and all families in America.
No. 2, the reason it is being enacted via the regulatory process is
because Members of the Senate rejected it 4 years ago at a time when
even our Democratic colleagues had a supermajority. In other words,
they could have done it when they wanted to when the Senate controlled
the White House and both Chambers of Congress, but they chose not to do
it then.
No. 3, it fits with a broader and deeply disturbing matter. Time and
time again, the President has used unelected bureaucrats to skirt the
normal legislative progress and override the will of Congress and avoid
any kind of electoral accountability.
The point is this: When the President, who is not going to stand for
election again, gets the Environmental Protection Agency to issue
regulations, those bureaucrats don't run for election. The American
people--my constituents in Texas and the Presiding Officer's
constituents in West Virginia--can't vote the rascals out of office, so
there is no accountability in the system. That is what the President
was bragging about when he said: I have a phone, and I have a pen. He
was effectively saying he was going to do it alone, and that is what he
is trying to do here.
The result has been a misguided explosion of burdensome and onerous
regulations, and those have a cost to our economy. The last quarter--
the last 3 months of the year--we learned that instead of the economy
growing in a way that will create more jobs and reduce unemployment,
the economy actually contracted. It shrank by a full percentage point.
One of the reasons why the economy shrank is because of overly
burdensome regulations where there is no cost-benefit analysis, much
less any cost-benefit calculus whatsoever.
According to one estimate, between 2009 and 2013, Federal regulatory
costs increased by nearly $500 billion--a truly astonishing figure. Not
only have these regulations proven to be onerous and unwieldy, they
have been implemented by agencies that are hopelessly incompetent at
handling even basic responsibilities.
As my friend the junior Senator from Oklahoma said a few years ago:
It is absurd to allow an agency as incompetent as the EPA
to exercise vast new powers when they can't manage less
complex tasks. If the EPA can't train 250,000 contractors to
manage lead paint rules . . . why should we expect them to
regulate the energy-consuming processes used in every sector
of the economy?
If this competence question of a huge bureaucracy sounds familiar, I
think we are now learning that when the hubris overcomes the good
judgment of leaders here in Washington and decides to take over one-
sixth of the economy, which is our health care sector, you get
ObamaCare and the disaster that has proven to be in terms of its
implementation.
None of the essential promises that were made about how it would
actually work have been kept. In other words, if you like what you
have, you can keep it, the price would go down $2,500 for a family of
four, and, yes, you can keep your doctor. None of those promises have
proven to be true. Yet those were the promises upon which ObamaCare was
passed. Now we see the administration make additional extravagant
promises that can only be borne out of hubris based on what we have
seen as the implementation of ObamaCare.
Not only have these regulations proved to be onerous, they are not
going to work the way the administration predicts, except we are pretty
sure it will kill jobs and reduce economic growth and further extend
this lengthy recession which has been the slowest economic recovery in
America since the Great Depression.
At a time of mass unemployment and historically low levels of labor
force participation, America needs an energy policy that is projobs and
proworker and profamily. This new EPA rule is the opposite of that. It
would destroy jobs, it would hurt workers, and it would hurt consumers
because it would raise the cost of living for middle-class families,
including people on fixed incomes such as seniors. The fact that such a
regulation is even being considered not in Congress but in the
executive branch agencies such as the EPA, amid the weakest economic
recovery since the Great Depression, illustrates once again how
misguided this administration's priorities truly are.
I wish to clarify once again that the debate over President Obama's
EPA
[[Page S3356]]
rule is not about the science of climate change; it is a debate about
whether massive regulations should be forced to pass a simple cost-
benefit analysis. The EPA rule clearly fails that test.
For all of those reasons and plenty more, we will be continuing to
urge President Obama, from this side of the aisle but in a bipartisan
way, to put jobs and families ahead of politics and ideology.
I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. PORTMAN. I ask unanimous consent to speak for 9 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Burwell Nomination
Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I appreciate the Presiding Officer
allowing me to speak this afternoon. I am speaking in the context of a
nomination we are likely to consider on the floor this week. I am told
on Thursday we are going to be asked to confirm the President's
nomination of Sylvia Burwell to be the next Secretary of Health and
Human Services.
This is a very important job for a number of reasons. One reason is
it is the job in charge of implementing the Affordable Care Act,
otherwise known as ObamaCare. Therefore, I think it is an appropriate
time to talk about the urgent need for us to address some of the
continuing problems we have had with implementation.
This whole subject of ObamaCare of course has divided this Chamber
pretty sharply over the last few years. Part of the reason is it was
forced through the Congress without a single bipartisan vote; in other
words, all Democratic votes and not a single Republican vote. Also, it
was pushed through quickly, so it resulted in a lot of problems. We
have seen that in terms of the implementation of ObamaCare generally,
including some of the computer problems and some of the concerns people
have about having their health care canceled and so on.
I wish to speak about a specific issue with regard to implementation,
one on which I hope we could be together, that this issue would unite
us as Republicans and Democrats--that we would take forceful action to
deal with it. It is an issue I think all of us agree on because it has
to do with the taxpayers. It has to do with money that might be going
out under ObamaCare that is not appropriate. It is ensuring that the
subsidy payments in ObamaCare are going to the people who actually
qualify for them.
As this Chamber knows, the subsidies started to flow on January 1.
ObamaCare provides subsidies to health care premiums for low- and
middle-income Americans who don't qualify for Medicaid. They are not
under the poverty line but are above the poverty line; actually, above
133 percent of the poverty line. In fact, people who earn up to 400
percent of the poverty line are eligible for these subsidies. Recently,
the Kaiser Foundation estimated the number of people who can legally
qualify for these funds and receive them is about 6.6 million
Americans. These subsidies can be fairly large. They can exceed $10,000
a year, for instance, for a family of four. So we are talking about
billions of dollars of taxpayer money. The question is, Are they going
to the right people? I think, because there is so much money involved,
the American people should be able to rightly expect that the
government has in place a system to ensure that the people who are
supposed to get it are getting it and to ensure that those who are
claiming the subsidies and receiving the taxpayer dollars are eligible
for them.
In January of this year, in response to a requirement actually
attached to legislation that passed the Senate called the Ryan-Murray
budget--in response to that legislation where there was a requirement
that there be some sort of process put in place--the Secretary of
Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, ensured Congress in a
letter that HHS had ``implemented numerous systems and processes to
carry out'' income verification procedures.
So she sent a letter to the Congress saying: Don't worry about it. We
have it covered. We have implemented numerous systems and processes to
carry out income verification procedures.
Unfortunately, what we are finding out now--and here we are, gosh, 6
months later--is that a lot of those assurances might not be accurate,
that it appears as though they have not put in place these processes.
The Washington Post wrote a recent article that got my attention. It
got my attention because it reported that, in fact, no permanent system
has been built that is capable of verifying those eligible to receive
the subsidies. In fact, according to internal reports that were
obtained by the Washington Post, since no computer capability for
verifying eligibility yet exists, Health and Human Services will begin
sorting through all these applications by hand at some indefinite date
in the future.
So this is concerning. These internal reports are not reports we have
here in Congress. They are not reports my constituents have. The
American people have not been able to see these reports. But the
Washington Post got hold of some that showed, in fact, they have not
put in this permanent system or an automated system of any kind that
you would normally expect with this kind of money going out the door.
So here we are in 2014 and the U.S. Government is going to comb
through, I guess by hand, literally millions of documents of people who
are claiming subsidies--by hand--and try to figure out how to deal with
it. It is like something out of a bad movie, but it is not a laughing
matter because the consequences are significant.
The Washington Post reports that the government may already be paying
incorrect subsidies to more than 1 million people, although that is
just a best guess. These fraudulent payments--if that is accurate--of
course, would then be costing the American taxpayers millions, maybe
billions of dollars.
When news broke about this problem last month through this story in
the Washington Post, I wrote a letter to Secretary Sebelius at the
Health and Human Services agency. I also wrote it to the IRS
Commissioner because the obvious thing to do would be to check the
information that is given with the IRS records to see whether the 1040
matches up with what you are saying your income is.
In the letter, I said: Can you give us the answers about these very
serious questions that have been raised, and can you tell us what the
Department of Health and Human Services is doing about this?
I asked for a response by June 1. It is now past June 1 and I have
received nothing but silence in response. That is why I have come to
the floor today to say, look, I do not think anybody on either side of
the aisle in the Senate thinks this is acceptable. Some on the other
side might say: Well, we are more concerned about people who are not
getting the subsidies they are eligible for because the verification is
not in place to help them. That is fine. The point is that the
subsidies ought to go to the people who are eligible. Whether they are
overstating or understating their income and therefore made eligible or
not eligible, there ought to be a system in place. That is a minimum
requirement, I would think, that we would all want to have in place to
be able to, again, save these payments from going out in a fraudulent
way, to the tune of what could be billions of dollars. I cannot imagine
anyone thinks the current situation is acceptable.
So we are going to see if HHS gets its act together and gets serious
about enforcing these rules. I think it is going to require new
leadership. That is why I am hoping that with the nomination and debate
this week of Sylvia Burwell to be the next Secretary of HHS, we can
have a discussion about this issue and that she can provide some of
that new leadership from the top to ensure that indeed we do have
accountability through the system and we can figure out whether this
situation will be resolved.
Unfortunately, I think it is also going to require leadership from
the top-top, meaning from the White House as well. This is not an
isolated incident, unfortunately, of incompetence, I would say, on
behalf of our Federal Government in implementing in this case a very
complicated law. We have seen this recently with the scandal
[[Page S3357]]
that has involved the VA--the VA health system--another big complicated
system that is obviously not working to take care of the needs of our
veterans, who should be at the front of the line receiving the best
care and too often we find out are at the back of the line or maybe are
not on the list at all, as we saw with regard to the Phoenix VA center,
where 1,700 people were just taken off the list altogether. We have
seen it with regard to the IRS scandal, where you have the Internal
Revenue Service actually going after Americans because of their
political beliefs. Nothing could be more wrong in terms of building
faith and trust in our Federal system than to think that the tax
collector is going after folks because of their political beliefs.
So all these recent issues that have come up of incompetence and of
the government not keeping the trust are bad. It is bad even in good
times. Today is not good times because already that faith in the
Federal Government is at record lows. The faith in this institution is
at a record low, they say.
It should be our responsibility to begin to rebuild that faith by
doing what makes sense. What is going on at HHS does not make sense.
Everyone knows there needs to be a system in place and a permanent
automated system to deal with this; the same with the VA, the same with
the IRS. I hope we see that kind of leadership. I hope we can do that
because it is the right thing to do for taxpayers, but it also rebuilds
trust in the American Government system. To do that is going to require
some serious and immediate action.
In the case of HHS, I call on the administration today to make good
on the promise they made in January where they said: No problem. We
have it covered. We have a system in place to ensure that there are not
mispayments going out, that only folks who are eligible are going to
get these payments.
In the process of Sylvia Burwell's nomination, let's raise this
issue. Let's encourage her to show leadership at HHS to be able to deal
with this issue. Let's ensure that subsidies are going to the right
people and that taxpayers are being protected.
I thank the Presiding Officer for the time.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Student Loan Debt
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, during this last break I went back to
Illinois and visited a lot of college campuses. I went to Augustana
College, which is in the Quad Cities, and then went to Illinois State
University in Normal, IL, and then down to the University of Illinois.
At each one of those campuses I had a press conference about student
debt. Student debt today has reached a point where we have to pay close
attention to it--and we should. The vast majority of Americans ask a
very basic question: Senator, is there anything you are doing today
that really is going to help my family? For 44 million Americans
currently paying on student loans in America, legislation that is going
to be introduced tomorrow can make a big difference.
I am cosponsoring a bill with Elizabeth Warren, the Senator from the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, a very bright lady who was on the
faculty of the Harvard Law School and who understands these issues
better than almost anyone I have ever met. She is leading the way on a
college student loan refinancing bill.
Here is what we are trying to do. We are trying to get those students
who are trapped in big debts with high interest rates a chance to
refinance their loans. How significant could it be? Well, when I met
these students at different schools, they told me their stories. As a
former college borrower myself, as a father raising three kids who went
through college, it was sad. It was really sad to hear their stories
because the amount of debt that students are running into now is
dramatically higher than anything those of us who were in the early
stages of college loans ever experienced.
I will not even tell you how much I borrowed because it makes me
sound ancient. But it scared me to death when I borrowed that money to
go through college and law school for fear I would never pay it back.
It turns out I did as I was supposed to. But students today many times
find themselves so deeply in debt they just cannot get out from under
it.
Now, I am going to set over here on this side a whole category of
speeches on institutions known as for-profit colleges and universities.
They are in a special place in my thinking. For-profit colleges and
universities, who are they? The biggest one is the University of
Phoenix. Apollo Group owns a series of universities. You have seen
their advertising, I will bet.
They, at one point, had over 450,000 students in this University of
Phoenix network of schools across the country. The second biggest is
DeVry, another for-profit university out of my State of Illinois.
Kaplan is the third largest. I am going to set them over here because
they are in a special category. They are in a category of colleges and
universities that we ought to be doing something about.
Three numbers tell the story about the for-profit colleges and
universities. Ten percent of high school graduates go to for-profit
colleges and universities. Ten percent of America's high school
graduates go to these schools. These schools receive 20 percent of all
Federal aid to education--10 percent of the students, 20 percent of the
Federal aid.
These for-profit colleges and universities receive over $32 billion a
year in Federal aid. Why is it so much if they only have 10 percent of
the students? Because they charge so much when it comes to tuition. But
here is the number: 46. Forty-six percent of all student loan defaults
are students out of for-profit colleges and universities.
Why? Worthless diplomas, too much debt, and the students cannot find
work to pay off their debts. Now, what if you have a college loan?
There is something you ought to know about it. You probably heard it.
It bears repeating. There are only a handful of debts in America that
you can incur as an American citizen that cannot be discharged in
bankruptcy: taxes--you have to pay those--child support, alimony, and
college student loans.
No matter what happens to you financially, there is virtually no way
out. The loan you take out to go to college is with you for a lifetime.
Even in bankruptcy you cannot discharge it. At the end of bankruptcy,
it is still sitting there. Unfortunately, the interest is growing.
That is why we have to take a look at it. Let's move aside from the
for-profit college world, which I think is a separate issue, but a very
important one, and look at the big picture. For too many Americans the
promise of a fair shot at an affordable college education has become a
long shot. Average tuition and fees at 4-year public colleges has more
than tripled in the last 30 years. I can guarantee you that income for
American families has not tripled in that same period.
Tuition has outpaced inflation for 32 straight years. The cost of
education at all colleges and universities has been going up
dramatically. No other major consumer expenditure, including health
care, can make that claim. It is not just low-income students who feel
the impact of these rising costs. It is middle-income students and
their families as well. Since 2003 the amount of student loan debt in
America has quadrupled. Nationally there are now almost 40 million
borrowers with more than $1 trillion in debt. There is more student
loan debt in America today than the combined sum total of all credit
card debt. That is more than there is in auto loans. Only mortgages
would be a higher category of debt in terms of its total cost.
The average student loan debt increased by 49 percent between 2005
and 2012 to $27,850. On average, Illinois graduates in the class of
2012 left with a little over $28,000 in debt, but their individual
debts, as you might guess, are much higher; and 1.7 million Illinoisans
have outstanding student loan debt out of a population of about 12.5
million.
[[Page S3358]]
What effect does $1 trillion in student loan debt have on the
American economy. The Federal Reserve warns us that it is threatening
current and future economic growth. The student loan debt crisis has
been compared to the mortgage crisis we went through 8 or 9 years ago.
It is ingrained in American culture that each successive generation
wants to do better than the previous one. But student loan debt is
crippling middle-class growth for younger generations.
Currently the median household wealth of people my age, in the 55-to-
65 bracket, is 44 times the net worth of the median household of people
younger than 35. People under the age of 35 are struggling. This is
historically unprecedented and has a lot to do with the student loan
debt.
I have heard from so many people in my State about this issue. They
say student loan debt is preventing them from buying a car, borrowing
any more money to finish their education, having their own place to
live, getting married and, once married, having children. I have met
couples who have said: We made a family decision; no kids until we pay
off the student loans; I am not sure we will be able to pay them off in
time to make that decision.
Think about that for a second. They cannot even start a family
because of the student debts and the fear that they are going to
default on them. I heard it firsthand back in Illinois last week. One
student I met, Mabinty Tarawallie, is struggling with student loan debt
even though she has done everything right. She immigrated to the United
States from Africa when she was 11 years old. Her family was very poor
but they told her: You have to have an education.
She graduated from high school, went to a local community college--a
good place to start--and completed her undergraduate degree in
sociology at the University of Illinois.
She told me she wanted to help others pick themselves up out of
poverty as she did, so she went to graduate school for a master's
degree in social work. She recently graduated from a program at the
University of Illinois. Although she was able to get through her
undergraduate years without much debt, she spread out her graduate
studies over 3 years as she was raising her family of three kids.
She had one graduate assistantship, but she had to pay for the rest
with loans. To compound this problem, her husband, another University
of Illinois graduate student in education, also has student loans.
Together, Mabinty and her husband, now that they have completed their
degrees, have a debt of $150,000. One wants be a social worker and the
other wants to be a teacher.
Now she worries about how her family is going to be able to cope,
with debt three times the annual salary she might receive as a social
worker. The irony is even as a college degree becomes harder to afford
for the middle class, it is more important than ever that people get
educated, trained, and skilled for better jobs. Only college-educated
workers have had wage gains in the past 30 years. If you don't go the
college route, your chances of success are diminished dramatically.
That is why we want to address these serious issues.
This bill I am talking about, the one we are going to introduce
tomorrow, will give students with college student loan debt who are
current on their loans an opportunity to refinance.
I talked to Mabinty and other students. It meant for her that her
interest rate would come down from 6.8 percent to 3.8 percent. If you
have ever gone out to get a mortgage or you know somebody who did, they
will explain to you that 3 percent of your interest rate is a big deal.
If you can get your interest rate reduced by 3 percent, your chances of
paying off the principal are going to be a lot better.
This bill I have cosponsored with Elizabeth Warren, Jack Reed, and
others is called the Bank on Students Emergency Loan Refinancing Act.
It will help millions of current borrowers refinance their Federal or
private student loans into these lower Federal interest rates. Those
with Federal loans can refinance into lower rates, the same rates
available to students who took out new loans this year.
Under the Warren bill, those with private loans--many of whom have
sky-high interest rates and are facing collection agencies beating up
on them--can refinance with Federal loans with lower rates and strong
consumer protection. Refinancing, incidentally, is fully paid for. This
is a point I want to make, because this is where we lose the other side
of the aisle. This is where we can't find bipartisan cosponsorship for
refinancing college loans.
Here is how we pay for it.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
Mr. DURBIN. I ask for 2 additional minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DURBIN. Most of us have heard the name Warren Buffett, one of the
wealthiest men in America. He raised the question a few years ago: Why,
in America, is my income tax rate as a multimillionaire lower than my
secretary's income tax rate? There is an explanation in the Tax Code,
but it isn't a very good one. Warren Buffett said I should be paying
more than she is paying. So we have come up with something called the
Buffet rule, which says if you are in the multimillionaire category,
you are going to pay a higher income tax rate than your secretary.
What a radical idea that is. I am just kidding. I think it is
reasonable, and that is how we pay for refinancing college loans.
The problem is that we go to the other side of the aisle and say: We
want to refinance college loans. It is going to take some money to do
it. We will put in the Buffett rule so millionaires pay more in their
income taxes. They say: We don't want any part of it. We will not
increase taxes on anybody.
Well, by taking that position, they are sticking 44 million Americans
with college loan debt at higher interest rates and all the problems
they generate.
Which is better, that millionaires pay a little more so working
families across America have a fair shot of paying off their college
loans or saying we are not going to touch the Tax Code for any reason
whatsoever--and isn't it a darn shame for these students and their
families.
Well, it is pretty obvious to me what we should be doing.
I met Shiann Poshard last week at Illinois State University. She
graduated with a teaching degree and about $30,000 in student debt. She
has a job, and she is going to be teaching in public schools in Eureka,
IL. Even so, on a first-year teaching salary--with an upcoming wedding,
incidentally--her student loan debt will undoubtedly be a burden. If
she is allowed to refinance her loan, which she took out at 6.8
percent, she could cut her interest rate almost in half. That will make
a big difference.
Tomorrow, when this legislation is introduced, I hope anyone who has
a family, where they have borrowed money for college, who has a son or
daughter deep in debt and wondering how they are going to get out from
under it, contact your Senator or your Congressman and ask them: Are
you going to be part of this college student loan refinancing effort?
I hope they will say yes. We need bipartisan support to help these
students out of the debt they are facing today.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there will be 2
minutes of debate prior to the vote on the confirmation of the
nomination.
Mr. DURBIN. I ask unanimous consent to yield back all time on the
pending nomination.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the nomination
of Sharon Y. Bowen, of New York, to be a Commissioner of the Commodity
Futures Trading Commission for a term expiring April 13, 2018?
Mr. JOHANNS. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk called the roll.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Michigan.
Mr. LEVIN. On this vote I have a pair with the Senator from New
Jersey [Mr. Booker]. If he were present and voting, he would vote
``yea.'' If I were permitted to vote, I would vote ``nay;'' therefore,
I withhold my vote.
[[Page S3359]]
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey, (Mr. Booker)
and the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Udall) are necessarily absent.
Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the
Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman), the Senator from Mississippi (Mr.
Cochran), and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee).
Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Arkansas (Mr.
Boozman) would have voted ``nay'' and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee)
would have voted ``nay''.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 48, nays 46, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 167 Ex.]
YEAS--48
Baldwin
Begich
Bennet
Blumenthal
Boxer
Brown
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Coons
Donnelly
Durbin
Feinstein
Franken
Gillibrand
Hagan
Harkin
Heinrich
Heitkamp
Hirono
Johnson (SD)
Kaine
King
Klobuchar
Leahy
Manchin
Markey
McCaskill
Menendez
Merkley
Mikulski
Murphy
Murray
Pryor
Reed
Reid
Rockefeller
Schatz
Schumer
Stabenow
Tester
Udall (NM)
Walsh
Warner
Warren
Whitehouse
Wyden
NAYS--46
Alexander
Ayotte
Barrasso
Blunt
Burr
Chambliss
Coats
Coburn
Collins
Corker
Cornyn
Crapo
Cruz
Enzi
Fischer
Flake
Graham
Grassley
Hatch
Heller
Hoeven
Inhofe
Isakson
Johanns
Johnson (WI)
Kirk
Landrieu
McCain
McConnell
Moran
Murkowski
Nelson
Paul
Portman
Risch
Roberts
Rubio
Sanders
Scott
Sessions
Shaheen
Shelby
Thune
Toomey
Vitter
Wicker
PRESENT AND GIVING A LIVE PAIR--1
Levin
NOT VOTING--5
Booker
Boozman
Cochran
Lee
Udall (CO)
=========================== NOTE ===========================
On page S3359, June 3, 2014, in the first column, the Record
reads: PRESENT AND GIVING A LIVE PAIR, AS PREVIOUSLY RECORDED--2
Booker, for Levin, against NOT VOTING--6 Booker Cochran Levin
Boozman Lee Udall (CO)
The online Record has been corrected to read: PRESENT AND GIVING
A LIVE PAIR--1 Levin NOT VOTING--5 Booker Cochran Udall (CO)
Boozman Lee
========================= END NOTE =========================
The nomination was confirmed.
____________________