[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 59 (Wednesday, April 22, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H2409-H2411]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
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FUTURE FORUM
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Jenkins of West Virginia). Under the
Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 2015, the Chair recognizes the
gentleman from California (Mr. Swalwell) for 30 minutes.
Mr. SWALWELL of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to
report back to the Congress on the progress of the House Democratic
Caucus' newest group, Future Forum.
Future Forum is made up of 14 Members of Congress who are going
across the country to talk about issues facing young Americans. We
launched just last Thursday. We have gone to New York, Boston, and San
Francisco, and we are just warming up.
Our goal is to listen to--not talk to--young Americans about issues
ranging from student loan debt, climate change, access to
entrepreneurship, and anything that is on their mind or standing in
their way of achieving their dreams, hopes, and aspirations.
I encourage anyone watching tonight across America to tweet at me and
to tweet at Future Forum under #futureforum, so that we can address
your concerns right here on the House floor and across the country.
We started Thursday evening in New York City. I was joined by
Democratic Policy and Communications chair Steve Israel; Congresswoman
Grace Meng, who represents the Queens area; and Congressman Seth
Moulton, who represents the greater Boston area.
Our first stop was at the District Cowork space in Manhattan in the
Flatiron District. You see here in this photo, this was not just any
rigid, stuffy townhall. We invited young entrepreneurs across Manhattan
and asked them at District Cowork: What stands in your way from
achieving your startup success?
You have in this room these young, energetic entrepreneurs. They are
ready to risk it all for their big idea. They are all millennials, aged
anywhere from 18 to 35; and it was a very informal, fluid session.
What we heard was not surprising, but it was very striking. For too
many of them, when we asked, How many of you have student loan debt,
their hands went up. For too many of them, when we asked, How much is
your student loan debt, their hands stayed up when I said, Is it above
$25,000 or $50,000 or $100,000?
Then I asked and my colleagues asked: What would you do with that
money? What would you spend it on if you weren't spending it every
month on your student loan debt?
These young, business-minded people, they didn't say: I would go on a
vacation, or I would buy a new toy or a boat or have fun for myself.
They said: I would invest it in my company. I would invest it in my
company.
What do we know happens when entrepreneurs invest money in their
companies? They create jobs. They create growth around their industries
that put more and more Americans to work.
Future Forum members learned a lot at this visit, and what we learned
was that student loan debt is a barrier--not just a barrier, it is a
tall brick wall that is standing in the way of an entire generation
realizing their entrepreneurial dreams.
What we heard at District Cowork in New York was not unique. In San
Francisco, we went to Hive, and we visited their Impact Hub. Hive
looked just like District Cowork. You have tall ceilings, nothing on
the walls--they are barely painted--no carpet on the floor, just a
building filled with a lot of energy, a lot of good ideas, but a lot of
challenges standing in their way.
At Hive, these young entrepreneurs, just like other entrepreneurs
across the country, they told us student loan debt is standing in their
way. Forty-one million young Americans have a collective amount of $1.3
trillion in student loan debt.
We heard from people at Hive that their debt was not just standing in
the way of them starting their own business, but we asked the room--and
at this event, I was joined by Congressman Ruben Gallego of the Phoenix
area and Congressman Pete Aguilar of the San Bernardino area in
California and Congressman Derek Kilmer of the Tacoma, Washington,
area--we asked the room, about 100 people: How many of you own a home?
Crickets, dead silent.
How many of you have parents who own a home? Most of their hands went
up.
How many of you are renters now? Most of their hands stayed up.
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How many of you fear that you will not be able to ever own a home in
your life? Again, these young people, full of energy, great ideas,
great educations, their hands stayed up.
We asked: What is standing in the way? The hundreds of dollars a
month they are paying in student loan debt.
Homeownership, one of the bedrocks of the American Dream, to have
something to call your own, something that we fought during our
independence as a country, that right for property, to chart your own
course, have your own piece of land, now, an entire generation of
millennial Americans, 80 million of them, have mounting student loan
debt that is going to delay their ability to buy a home, that is going
to delay their ability to start and have a family, that is going to
delay their opportunity to chase their dreams.
While we were in California, we also visited Chabot College in
Hayward, California, in the 15th Congressional District, which I am
proud to represent. At Chabot College, we assembled over 100 community
college students, and we asked them: How much student debt do you think
you will have by the time you take your first postcollege job?
What we learned there, again, was very, very bewildering. Most
anticipated that they would have $25,000 to $50,000 in student loan
debt.
We did it in a very interactive way. We used text polling, so we
asked the students to text in their answers. We polled the group and
said: Are you able to take a full load of courses so that you can get
out of community college as fast as possible and move on to a 4-year
university and move on into your career field?
Most of them said that they couldn't. One student told us he worked
three jobs. The jobs, they were all mostly the same. They weren't jobs
that were going to put them into the area of industry they would hope
and aspire to be in. They were retail and restaurant jobs.
The members of Future Forum could identify with this. Congressman
Kilmer talked about washing dishes in college, and Congressman Gallego
talked about working as a restaurant server, and I harkened back to my
days in this town in Washington, D.C., as an unpaid intern and working
at Tortilla Coast at the end of the day to make it work.
Things are different now. Tuition continues to go up. These students
told us, during our Future Forum visit, that they are taking a number
of odd jobs just to pay for the rising cost of community college.
We talked about the President's plan during the State of the Union in
this very Chamber to offer free community college to anyone who was
qualified and able and willing. The students were hopeful but not too
optimistic. They see too many barriers and walls here in Washington to
get anything done that could help them.
We also asked the students to participate in a word cloud. A word
cloud is you text in an answer, and, on the screen behind us, it put
different words in response to different answers. We asked the
students: What would you do if you didn't have student debt every
month? What would your payment money go to?
Again, no one said they were going to buy a bunch of toys or go on a
bunch of fancy vacations. They said that they would probably buy a car
so they didn't have to take the bus or take the BART to class; they
would hope to buy their first home; they would invest--which would help
the economy.
Future Forum was also at San Francisco State University, and a young
girl at San Francisco State University, as we talked about solutions we
could offer to address rising tuition rates for current students and
the debt burden that 41 million Americans carry, one San Francisco
State student told us that she had a dual challenge in her house.
She was trying to pay for her own education, make it by, not
qualifying for many student loans, while her mother also had $200,000
of her own student debt. This is a family matter--this is a family
matter--not just for that young San Francisco State student, but for
millions of young people across the country. This debt is beginning to
pile up and affect multiple generations.
We had the honor of going to Boston, where we were hosted by
Congressmen Joe Kennedy and Seth Moulton. We visited Thermo Fisher
Scientific, and we met with young scientists, people who invested in
their own future by taking student loans and going to college and
getting, in many cases, graduate degrees to work in the field of
science, to work in the field of therapies and devices, hoping that
they could play a critical role in helping people, making the world a
better place.
At Thermo Fisher, these young scientists told us exactly what we
heard in San Francisco and in New York City. Their student loan debt
weighs on them. It holds them down like an anchor.
Something happened at the Thermo Fisher visit that we didn't expect--
because you have a room full of young entrepreneurs, young scientists,
but there was a mother who showed up. She kind of confessed: Well, you
know, I know this event was billed as a millennial event.
She told us she was worried about her daughter. Her daughter had gone
to college, just as we had, as a society, told young people you have to
do. Her daughter took out a number of student loans, and her daughter
lives at home and can't find a job.
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What we are seeing for our millennial generation and what was
expressed by this mother is that we are at risk of becoming a permanent
boomerang generation. We go out, and we study, and we attain a degree
or training or technical skills; but because of the rising costs of
tuition and the debt that our generation is saddled with, we boomerang
back home. This mother told us it doesn't just weigh on her daughter,
who has a college degree and is trying to find a job, but that it
weighs on the entire household.
With 41 million young people across our country with $1.3 trillion in
student loan debt, imagine how many families are affected by this.
These are typically your parents who are just starting to realize their
golden years.
They worked so hard; paid into Social Security; hopefully had a
pension; and they want to retire, maybe travel, maybe take up a hobby,
maybe join a local club; but their hopes and dreams--their golden
retirements--are being affected by children who are returning to the
home and need their support. We heard this all across America on this
tour. This is a family matter, the student loan debt crisis in our
country.
Finally, in the Boston area, we also went to Greentown Labs, a clean
tech incubator I visited with Congressmen Moulton and Kennedy in
Somerville, Massachusetts.
Here, we heard, again, about student loan debt, but we also were
asked by a number of people at this event: What is standing in the way
of fixing this problem?
We actually asked the audience: What do you think? From your
perspective, what do you think is standing in the way?
So many of them told us campaign finance laws--a smart, young crowd
in Somerville at Greentown Labs--campaign finance laws, people in the
audience told us--young entrepreneurs--and I thought they were just
focused like a laser on their ideas and on raising money for their
first and second rounds of funding and on trying to scale up and
getting their ideas off the ground. No. These young people, they get
it.
They told us exactly what the problem was. Because of unlimited
amounts of money that can be spent in elections today, there is less
courage in the Congress to do big things, to tackle big problems, and
to help a whole country of people who need it.
They asked us about climate change. Now, this was the first
laboratory we had visited on the tour, and we had met with a number of
young scientists who were working in the clean tech and clean energy
areas. They asked us about climate change and what we were doing in
Congress to address it. I want to just go to some of the people who
have tweeted in to us about Future Forum this evening and what their
thoughts are.
I will first mention Hive, who has tweeted at us in San Francisco
that they are excited about the ideas presented and the issues raised
and ``let's get to work.''
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I want to tell you how we are getting to work. This was not just a
one-way talking-to with millennials. Through #futureforum, through
medium.com, through the article we wrote and posted there, and through
the information we have collected across the country, we are actually
putting the ball in the court of the young entrepreneurs and students
who are charting this new economy. We told them to help us crowdsource
ideas that can move America forward, and they gave us some at these
visits.
With student loan debt being, probably, the biggest, most pressing
issue, there was a general consensus that there are two groups affected
by this. The first group is of the students who are enrolled right now
and paying tuition and accruing debt. The second group is of the 41
million young Americans who already have student loan debt.
The solutions that were thrown at us for the students who are in
school now or who will be in school was, one, treat public education as
a public good. Find a way to make sure that any qualified, capable
person who wants to go to college can do so, and keep the costs as low
or as next to zero as you can.
We had people who were so excited about the Future Forum who had
graduated college 30, 40 years ago who came out and talked to us, and
they harkened back to a time in California when, in the UC and Cal
State systems, tuition was essentially free--they even threw in the
yearbook--yet the return on investment was a whole generation of
educated individuals who would contribute to the greatest economy in
the United States: California.
Their eyes popped out when they saw how much it costs today to go to
UC Berkeley: $33,000 today is what it costs a year for a student to go
to UC Berkeley. People who had attended 20, 30 years ago talked about
when it was almost next to nothing. It is $33,000 a year.
Congressman Gallego looked at that number--and he went to Harvard.
Harvard is the Berkeley of the East. Congressman Gallego looked at that
number, and he said: That is about what I paid when I graduated from
Harvard in the early 2000s, $33,000 a year.
Treat education as a public good. Keep interest rates as low as
possible. The consensus among people who met with us--these current
students and entrepreneurs--was that the government should make no
money on interest rates on loans that it gives to students.
What about the 41 million young Americans who have the $1.3 trillion
in debt? There was a general consensus that those debtholders should be
able to refinance their student loans. You can refinance an auto loan.
You can refinance your home loan, but for the 86 percent of loans that
are the Federal loans of those 41 million Americans, you can't
refinance them.
Congressman Joe Courtney, a colleague of mine from Connecticut, has a
bill that would allow just that. Our Future Forum members are on that
bill, and we are hoping that it gets a vote in this Congress because
this should be a bipartisan issue.
Those 41 million Americans are not Democrats--they are not all
Democrats, and they are not all Republicans. They are hopeful,
aspirational young people who should benefit from the same refinancing
laws that you can use with your home mortgage or with your auto loan.
There were other big ideas, and no idea was too big or small for this
crowd. There was the proposal to have a jubilee for all of the
federally funded student loans--to take every borrower, return that
money to those borrowers, to put them at zero, and watch where the
money would go.
The hypothesis was, if these students did not have to pay anywhere
from $100 to $1,000 every month, they are not going to pocket the
money; they are going to put the money back in the economy, and it
would essentially be a stimulus.
I encourage everyone across the country--every young person, every
parent of a young person, every grandparent of a young person--to give
us your ideas. Future Forum is just getting started. We already are
working with our colleague Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, who is excited
and eager to host us in Michigan, and with other colleagues who want to
bring us to their States to talk to young people.
Give us your ideas. You can tweet them at #futureforum. Put it on
Instagram. You can find us on Facebook. Tweet. Facebook. Instagram. Use
social media, #futureforum. Give us your ideas because the goal is for
us to listen to you and then to work here in a bipartisan way to act on
your behalf.
This conversation will continue. Our work will go on until we have
lifted the burden that stands in the way of young, aspirational
entrepreneurs.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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