[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 190 (Wednesday, November 15, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5525-S5526]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FURTHER CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS AND OTHER EXTENSION ACT, 2024--MOTION
TO PROCEED--Continued
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
Student Loans
Mr. CASSIDY. Madam President, the Senate will soon vote on the
Congressional Review Act, a resolution of disapproval to overturn
President Biden's newest student loan scheme.
Just like President Biden's original student debt cancellation
scheme, this IDR does not forgive debt. It transfers the burden of $559
billion in Federal student loans to the 87 percent of Americans who
don't have student loans, who chose not to go to college, or who
already responsibly paid off their debts.
I want to emphasize this point. There is much said in this Chamber
about those who do less well and the implication that a policy like
this would benefit those who do less well. This benefits folks--
couples--who make over $400,000. They went to college precisely to get
a degree to earn more money, and many of them are earning more money.
And this forgives--no, it doesn't forgive their debt. It transfers
their debt to someone who never went; someone--he and his wife, she and
her husband who are making $65,000 a year. They are going to have to
pick up the slack for a couple making over $400,000.
This is not a benefit for those who are less well-off. This is a
benefit--a political payout--to folks who have done quite well
precisely because they went to college.
Under this rule, a majority of bachelor's degree student loan
borrowers will not be expected to pay back even the principal. Ninety-
one percent of new student loan debt will be eligible for reduced
payments subsidized by the taxpayers. Where is the forgiveness for the
guy who didn't go to college but is working to pay off the loan on a
truck he takes to work? What about the woman who paid off her student
loans and bought a less expensive home but is now struggling to afford
the mortgage that she has? Is the administration providing them relief?
No, of course not. Instead, the administration would have them not only
pay their bills but the bills of those who decided to go to college in
order to make more money or who made a decision not to pay back their
student loans so they could buy a bigger house.
This is irresponsible. It is deeply unfair.
Aside from being unfair, this student loan cancellation scheme does
not address the root cause that created the debt in the first place.
For example, President Biden's policy does not hold colleges or
universities accountable for rising costs. In the last 30 years,
tuitions and fees have jumped at private nonprofit colleges--nonprofit
colleges--by 80 percent. At public 4-year institutions, they jumped 124
percent.
College is one of the largest financial investments many Americans
make, but there is little information for the student and her family to
know that they are making the right decision for where they are
attending or the amount they are borrowing. So my Republican colleagues
and I recently introduced the Lowering Education Cost and Debt Act, a
package of five bills aimed at directly addressing the issues driving
skyrocketing costs of higher education and the increasing amounts of
debts students take on to attend school.
By the way, some of these bills are by themselves. It is in a
package, but you divide them out. Some of them are bipartisan in
support and in sponsorship.
Our legislation puts downward pressure on tuition, empowers students
to make the educational decisions that put them on track to succeed
both academically and financially. We are providing solutions for
students and working to solve the student debt crisis--not a bandaid
that merely transfers the debt to someone else, someone who is
oftentimes poor, less financially well-off, than the person who no
longer has the responsibility to pay back the loan.
President Biden's student loan scheme is not a fix. It appears to be
a politically motivated giveaway, forcing taxpayers to shoulder the
responsibility of paying off someone else's debt. We need real
leadership to address the issue.
I close by encouraging all my colleagues to join me in voting to pass
this Congressional Review Act resolution to prevent this unfair student
debt cancellation scheme--unfair to the hundreds of millions of
Americans who will bear the burden of paying off hundreds of billions
of dollars of someone else's student loan, a student loan they took to
make more money than almost all of those other people.
I yield the floor.
Mr. CRAPO. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I rise in strong opposition to S. Res.
43 that we will be voting on today.
The reason for that is that we have to be very clear as to what is
happening in America right now. Today, while the very wealthiest people
in our country are becoming much wealthier, over 60 percent of
Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, and many are working for
starvation wages and under really bad working conditions.
In America today, while CEOs are making nearly 350 times as much as
their average workers, tens of millions of our people in every State in
this country are struggling to pay the rent, to pay for the childcare
they need, to pay for healthcare, to pay for prescription drugs, and to
put food on the table.
That is the reality of America today. And while that is true for
people of all ages, it is especially true for our younger people, who,
by the way, if we don't change the nature of our economy soon, will
have, for the first time in the modern history of America, a lower
standard of living than their parents.
If we lived in a nation with a rational set of priorities, we would
not be giving more tax breaks to billionaires and large corporations,
as many of my Republican colleagues want--not at a time when we have
more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had; we would not
be spending, in my view, $900 billion on the military while the
military-industrial complex makes huge profits and has cost overruns
and while the Pentagon is not even audited.
What we would be doing, in fact, if we had a rational set of
priorities, like a number of other countries around the world are
doing, is to understand that the future of our country rests with the
young people in America. That is where our future is.
Once we understand that, we would be doing everything possible to
make sure every young person in this country, regardless of income,
receives the best quality education our Nation can provide. That is
what we would be doing if we wanted this country to succeed.
Our goal must be to make sure that we have the best educated
workforce in the world in a highly competitive global economy. I would
point out that that is not only important for individuals, for the
young people themselves, it is vital for the future of our country.
Everybody understands that if you have a poorly armed and poorly
trained military, they don't win battles. Well,
[[Page S5526]]
if you have a poorly educated population in a radically changing world
economy, depending more and more on technology--if you don't have a
well-educated workforce, our economy is not going to succeed in this
global economy.
In 1990, the United States led the world in terms of the percentage
of young people between the ages of 25 and 34 with college degrees. We
led the world in 1990. Today, we are in 15th place--not No. 1, not No.
5, not No. 10. We are in 15th place behind countries like South Korea,
Canada, Ireland, Australia, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Fifteenth
place for the richest country on Earth should not be the place we are
in if we are concerned about the future of this country and the need
for a well-educated population.
Over 40 years ago, a Federal Pell grant paid for over 80 percent of
tuition, fees, and room and board at a 4-year public college, but
today, because of massive cutbacks in education, Pell grants cover less
than a third of those expenses. Forty years ago, it covered 80 percent;
today, less than a third. That is a major reason why more than 45
million Americans are drowning in over $1.7 trillion in student debt.
I am sure it is true in Nevada, and I am sure it is true in Vermont,
and I am sure it is true in Louisiana. We have hundreds of thousands of
bright young people who have the ability to get a college degree or to
get a good trade certificate, but they cannot afford to do so. How
absurd is that?
If we love this country and we are concerned about the future, to say
to young people ``You are bright, you are smart, you did well in high
school, but you come from a lower income family. Too bad you can't
afford to go out and become a teacher or a doctor or an engineer. Too
bad''--I think that is absurd.
Let's be clear. We don't just need more 4-year college graduates; we
need more welders and electricians and plumbers and pipefitters and
carpenters and electricians. Amazingly enough, as the Presiding Officer
well knows, this Congress passed a recordbreaking amount of money to
rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. That is the good news. I think
almost everybody is proud of that. The bad news is, we don't have the
workers to do the work, to build the bridges and the sewer systems we
need and the water plants. We spend huge amounts of money on dealing
with the existential threat of climate change, but we don't have the
workers to help us with solar and wind and other forms of sustainable
energy.
In my view--and obviously I speak only for myself, not the
President--my view is that if we had a rational set of priorities in
this country, rather than worrying about tax breaks for billionaires
and for Wall Street, what we would do is make all public colleges and
universities in this country tuition-free and cancel all student debt.
That is what I think we should do that would be rational.
A hundred years ago, people thought and said, you know what, it is
unfair that working-class kids can't go to high school. They are
working in factories. They are working on farms and working in the
fields. People thought and said, you know what, we need to make public
education free. And they did it. So, today, any kid in America in any
State in America can walk into a public school--doesn't matter whether
you are rich or poor--you get the best education that system can
provide.
The world has changed over 100 years, and what was good 100 years ago
or 50 years ago in terms of a high school degree has changed, and we
need, in my view, to make public colleges and universities tuition-
free.
By the way, what we are seeing all over the country, in this State
and that State and this city, is a movement in that direction. I
applaud all those public officials around the country whose States and
cities are moving in that direction--making community colleges tuition-
free, public colleges tuition-free.
But what I would like to see happen is not what the President's plan
is about--not at all. But this is what the President's plan does do: It
cuts student loan payments in half for Americans who have taken out
undergraduate loans. In fact, under the President's SAVE Plan, student
loan borrowers will be seeing their monthly payments reduced from 10
percent of their income down to just 5 percent.
Further, the President's plan eliminates monthly student loan
payments entirely for people who are earning less than $15 an hour, and
it gives student loan borrowers the ability to wipe out or to
substantially reduce their student loan debt over a 10-year period.
If Senator Cassidy's resolution is enacted, it would repeal President
Biden's plan, and it would eliminate student debt relief for more than
5 million Americans who desperately need it. That would be absolutely
unacceptable.
My Republican colleagues tell you that they want to repeal the
President's student loan plan because it costs too much money; we just
can't afford it. Well, I am not going to deny that it does cost a lot
of money. But what I find amusing is that when we are saying we need to
help working-class and lower income young people, what my Republican
colleagues say is ``We can't afford to do that, but what we can do is
vote to give away over $1 trillion in tax breaks to the top 1 percent
and large corporations'' when former President Trump was in office--
without paying for it.
We can't help young people with their student debt, but we can give
tax breaks to the richest people in this country and large, profitable
corporations.
So if we can afford to provide trillions of dollars in tax breaks and
corporate welfare to the wealthiest people in this country and to the
largest corporations, we can help out millions and millions of young
people in this country.
I have talked to young people who say: You know what, we can't afford
to get a home of our own. We can't afford to even buy a car. We were
thinking about having kids; we can't even afford to do that.
So I think we have to get our priorities right and understand that a
vote for this resolution would deny student debt relief to millions of
Americans across every State and across every congressional district. A
vote for this resolution would place millions of Americans at risk of
eventual delinquency and default on their student loans. We cannot
allow that to happen.
I urge my colleagues to vote against this resolution.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
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