[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 85 (Wednesday, May 23, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H4688-H4690]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            THE PROSPER ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from North 
Carolina (Ms. Foxx) for 30 minutes.


                        Honoring Trooper Bullard

  Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, only days after we commemorated National 
Police Week, I rise to honor the life of Trooper Samuel Newton Bullard.
  The community of Ronda, North Carolina, tragically lost Trooper 
Bullard in the line of duty on Monday in my district.
  A 3-year State trooper veteran, Trooper Bullard was dedicated to the 
safety and protection of Surry County. Our country could not be so 
blessed without selfless law enforcement officers like him who protect 
our communities and uphold the rule of law that our safety rests upon.
  My heartfelt condolences go to the family and friends of Trooper 
Samuel Newton Bullard.
  While Trooper Bullard's ultimate sacrifice cannot be repaid, I remain 
grateful for his sacrifice and remember him and his loved ones in my 
prayers.
  Mr. Speaker, I am here tonight to talk about a serious situation that 
exists in our country, a very serious situation. Every Member of this 
body hears every day from employers in our districts that they have 
jobs that are going unfilled because Americans do not have the skills 
they need to fill those unfilled jobs. Specifically, there are over 6 
million unfilled jobs in this country due to the skills gap.
  We have a solution to that problem, Mr. Speaker, and it has come out 
of the Education and the Workforce Committee. It is called the PROSPER 
Act.
  Today, in The Hill, there was a terrific article encouraging this 
body and this Congress to pass the PROSPER Act, and I am going to quote 
some of the article. The article was entitled ``Congress, Pass the 
PROSPER Act for Federal Student Aid Reform.'' It is written by Rachelle 
Peterson.
  ``It has been 53 years since President Lyndon Johnson signed the 
Higher Education Act into law, and 10 years since it was reauthorized, 
under President Obama. Over the years, the law--which touches nearly 
every aspect of higher education--has turned into a special interest 
bonanza. It shields traditional colleges from marketplace competition, 
weaves a labyrinthine web of student aid options, packs on the pork, 
and in the last administration served as a pretext for the Department 
of Education to invent politically charged regulations.
  ``The PROSPER Act . . . would reauthorize the Higher Education Act 
and clean up the mess it has become. The bill would streamline Federal 
programs, relax burdensome regulations, forbid the Secretary of 
Education from acting outside the scope of the law, and protect the key 
principles of free speech and religious freedom.
  ``Today, my organization, the National Association of Scholars, 
released a top-to-bottom review of the PROSPER Act, concluding that it 
represents the best opportunity to reform higher education in decades. 
With a few tweaks, the PROSPER Act should be passed at once. Two 
especially important areas--Federal student aid reform and protections 
for freedom of speech and association--show why.''
  Ms. Peterson goes on: ``Currently, Federal student aid is a 
complicated system that encourages students to take on unmanageable 
debt and incentivizes colleges to raise tuition. The system has six 
loan programs, numerous grants, and some four dozen options for paying 
off or getting loans forgiven.
  ``The PROSPER Act simplifies Federal student aid, reining in costs 
and making it easier for students to see their options. It caps the 
amount of money parents and students can borrow from the Federal 
Government. It streamlines Federal student aid into a single loan 
program, a single grant program, and a single repayment program. It 
eliminates special interest projects, such as public service loan 
forgiveness, which privileged government employees by forgiving their 
loans after 10 years of payments.''
  Mr. Speaker, Ms. Peterson really encapsulates at the beginning of 
this article the reasons why we should be passing the PROSPER Act.
  Again, it passed out of the committee in December, and we are working 
to find floor time to be able to bring this bill to the floor and be 
able to have the House vote on it, send it to the Senate, have the 
Senate vote on it, and send it to the President for his signature.
  Again, Ms. Peterson says, ``Congress, Pass the PROSPER Act for 
Federal Student Aid Reform,'' but as she explains in her quotes as I 
quoted, she says even more about it.
  Let me explain some additional reasons why we need to pass the 
PROSPER Act.
  Eighty-one percent of parents say 4-year schools charge too much. 
Fifty-four percent of parents think 4-year schools are accessible to 
middle class Americans.
  Mr. Speaker, we have a problem in this country, not just with skills 
but people who are in poverty. The way for people to get out of poverty 
is to gain a good education that provides skills for people to be able 
to get a job.
  Mr. Speaker, all my life I have promoted the need for people to get a 
great education. I myself am a living example of what an education can 
do for a person. I grew up in a house with no electricity, no running 
water. My parents had a sixth grade and ninth grade education. I come 
from no privilege whatsoever, and yet, Mr. Speaker, I and many millions 
of other people in this country who came from similar circumstances 
were able to get a good education and use their talents and skills to 
lead successful lives.

[[Page H4689]]

  What I want, Mr. Speaker, is for every American who has the drive to 
do the same thing.
  Mr. Speaker, while the Federal Government doesn't create jobs, the 
Federal Government can create situations where jobs can be created by 
the private sector, and we can help people gain the skills that they 
need to take those jobs.
  Again, as I said, we have over 6 million unfilled jobs in this 
country, and what we need and what employers are begging us for is to 
provide the opportunity for people to gain the skills that they need to 
fill those jobs.

  This is the way the American people feel right now. Again, 81 percent 
of Americans say the schools charge too much.
  What we do with PROSPER is give an incentive to the schools to charge 
less. We don't tell them what to charge--that is not the role of the 
Federal Government--but we put in place policies that we believe will 
cause tuition not to continue to rise at such a high rate and that 
students will get more information so they choose well the programs 
they go into.
  Also, we are closing out the opportunities that I had and millions of 
other middle class Americans have had in the past by pricing post-
secondary education too high and making people feel it is not possible.
  Only 13 percent of the people in this country believe that college 
graduates are well prepared for success in the workplace. Something is 
wrong, Mr. Speaker, that we have this low a number of people in this 
country who believe that those who are graduating from college or 
attending college don't have the skills that they need to take those 
jobs that are out there available.

                              {time}  1830

  And there is even more negativity coming from those who employ those 
who go to college.
  Let me share some other information.
  Only two in five managers believe college graduates are well equipped 
for a job in their field.
  Mr. Speaker, even those who go to college are not completing their 
education. We have a 6-year completion rate of only 54.8 percent.
  And what does this mean to students? It means $68,000 per year in 
lost wages and the cost of attending.
  Mr. Speaker, this is occurring not just with those who attend what 
are known as 4-year colleges, which actually now are 6-year colleges 
because students are aren't graduating in 4 years--most of the ones 
graduating are graduating in 6 years--but it is applying to students 
who are in what we have always called 2-year colleges.
  So we have a terrible problem every way you look in this country in 
terms of providing the opportunities for not only poor people, but 
middle-income people, for completing a degree or a program or a 
certificate that will allow them to gain the skills that they need and 
the credentials they need.
  We are a credentialing society, Mr. Speaker. We want people to be 
able to prove what they have done. Therefore, we need to honor people 
with all kinds of credentials and make it easier for them to gain those 
credentials.
  Not everybody needs a baccalaureate degree to be a successful person 
in our country, and we know that because only 30 percent of the people 
in this country do have a baccalaureate degree. Yet we have millions 
and millions of people already who are successful.
  What we want to do is encourage more people to seek certification and 
programs that allow them to be certified without necessarily completing 
a baccalaureate.
  Mr. Speaker, people will say: Well, you don't honor liberal arts 
degrees if you are encouraging people to go on and just get a 
certificate. I want everybody to get a liberal arts degree. I got a 
liberal arts degree. I think that is wonderful.
  But people don't have to do that immediately out of high school, and 
they don't have to do it in order to lead successful lives.
  But ultimately, we hope everybody will be a lifelong learner, and the 
best way to be a lifelong learner, I think, is to help people be 
successful early on so they will be encouraged to continue to want to 
learn and do the things that will make them successful.
  So what does PROSPER do? We make it possible for more students to 
qualify for Pell grants for short-term programs. This is what we do, 
Mr. Speaker. Pell grants are the grants that undergird most people 
going to college who don't come from very affluent families.
  The maximum Pell grant in this country now is about $6,000. But 
students can qualify for that if they are very, very poor.
  What we would like to do is allow Pell grants to be used for shorter 
term programs, again, to get students to get into a program, help them 
gain certification so they can continue to earn and learn, so they can 
get a job, continue their education. So we make it possible for 7 
million more people to qualify for Pell grants.
  Many colleges and universities, unfortunately, have come out against 
the PROSPER Act.
  Why is that, Mr. Speaker, when we make 7 million more students 
eligible for Pell grants? It is because, Mr. Speaker, we also ask for 
more accountability on the part of the schools and universities, and I 
will talk a little bit more about that in a minute.
  And what do we do for the schools? We say to them: Help these Pell 
grant students graduate on time, meaning 4 years. And guess what. We 
will give you a little bonus for this.
  Right now, the schools get no rewards for helping their students 
graduate on time. In fact, they get rewarded if they extend the amount 
of time that students are in school. But that costs the students money 
in lost wages. It also encourages them to borrow more money, which is 
not a good thing.
  We know right now that we have $1.4 trillion in student debt in this 
country. We see the headlines every day in the newspapers about the 
problem with student debt. We don't want to encourage students to take 
out more debt. We want the students to get less debt.
  So we simplify what we are doing in financial aid, Mr. Speaker. That 
is what we hear from schools, parents, students.
  We just had a meeting with Members of Congress before I came up here, 
and Members of Congress who have had children go to college all talked 
about how complicated the FAFSA is, how invasive of privacy it is, and 
how we need to do better with the FAFSA, which is the financial aid 
form that students have to fill out to qualify. But we also have a 
complicated set of loans, grants, and campus-based programs.
  So what do we do with PROSPER? We simplify things, Mr. Speaker.
  Right now, we have six different loan programs, nine repayment 
options, 32 deferment and forbearance options--that means 32 different 
ways not to pay back your loan--and $1.4 trillion in student debt.
  What we do is we turn these six loan programs into one loan program. 
We make it much less complicated. Students and parents can understand.
  We take the various grant programs and turn them into one grant 
program. It will all be called Pell grants. And we take a couple of the 
grant programs and put them in workstudy.
  Why do we do that, Mr. Speaker? Because we have known for 50 years or 
more that workstudy is successful.
  We have done studies to show that students who work are much more 
likely to graduate, they do better academically, they become better 
time managers, and they are much more likely to get a job when they 
graduate.
  What we do with workstudy is we make it an even better program than 
it is now. We double the amount of money that is in workstudy, and we 
make it possible for the school to allocate up to 50 percent of the 
money into the private sector. What that will do, Mr. Speaker, is that 
will allow the students to work in the private sector, do an 
internship, a co-op, or an apprenticeship program.

  We know that most of the time those programs result in a job, and 
that will start the student on a successful career, we believe, in the 
industry or business or area that the student wants to go into. It is 
better than just working on campus. Working on campus is a positive 
thing, and it helps the students a lot, but working in the private 
sector is even better because, again, those often lead directly into 
employment in the private sector.
  So this is what we do. Mr. Speaker, we are responding to the public. 
We are

[[Page H4690]]

responding to the schools saying financial aid is too complicated. 
Parents and students say financial aid is too complicated. We are 
listening to both of those folks. The institutions have said it, and 
the students and parents have said it.
  What else are we doing with the financial aid? We are putting $14.5 
billion back in the pockets of students.
  How are we doing that? We are eliminating the origination fee for 
loans.
  This was a hidden fee that most students didn't know anything about. 
They had to pay this up front out of the loans that they were getting, 
and very often it made a big difference to the students in terms of 
having the funds that they needed to be successful in their programs.
  So we eliminate that, Mr. Speaker, and we think this is a very, very 
positive thing that we are doing.
  In general, what we are doing with the PROSPER Act is we are 
responding to the American people. We are responding to employers who 
are saying to us: Please, help us with smoothing the way for students 
to go to colleges and universities to be able to gain the skills that 
they need to take these 6 million jobs that we have available out here.
  Universities are not doing it for us. The colleges are not doing it 
for us. The colleges and universities are graduating approximately 1.4 
million students every year. Yet what is happening is we have got all 
of these jobs unfilled out here, and we have got graduates being 
graduated but they don't have the skills that the employers need. Study 
after study after study, poll after poll after poll is telling us that. 
We are hearing it from everybody.
  This is not a panacea. It is not going to answer every single need 
that is out there. We never said that it would. But it is a true reform 
of postsecondary education.
  What we want to do is say to the postsecondary institutions: We have 
heard you. We have heard what you have said. You have said reduce or 
eliminate a lot of the rules and regulations that we have. That is what 
is driving up the cost of tuition.
  Well, guess what, Mr. Speaker. We have revised or eliminated 59 
percent of the 59 rules that were presented to us by the colleges and 
universities. But when they talk to our colleagues here, we never hear 
them mention that to them. But we are doing that. So we are responding 
to them.
  They said: Simplify financial aid.
  We are doing that. So we are doing what the schools asked us to do. 
We are doing what employers asked us to do. We are providing funds for 
short-term programs that will result in certificates that will result 
in the ability for students to gain the skills they need and go to work 
after as short a period of time as 10 weeks and 300 hours. This is a 
huge change in the way financial aid has been offered in the past.
  We have listened to parents and students. We have simplified 
financial aid. We are making it much easier for students to apply for 
financial aid. We make it simpler for them to understand exactly the 
aid that they are going to be getting, what their obligations are going 
to be, and we know that, ultimately, it is going to bring down the cost 
of postsecondary education because we remove incentives for the 
colleges and universities to keep raising tuition and fees because we 
are saying to the colleges and universities: We want you to help these 
students succeed. We want you to encourage these students to take out 
less debt, and we are providing you the vehicle for doing that.
  So, Mr. Speaker, we are responding to all the segments of the 
population that have asked us to change the way postsecondary education 
is delivered in this country.
  We are going to help fulfill these 6 million unfilled jobs and we are 
going to bring down the cost of tuition and fees and make financial aid 
less complicated.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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